“Dogtooth” Available on 4K UHD Blu-ray from Visions Home Video!
Three adult children remain on home grounds by their manipulative father to protect them from the outside world and keep them suspended in a childlike state. Educated on a basic level and even educated incorrectly to strategically keep their spongy intellect pure and from asking too many questions about the curiosities beyond the front gate, the children must complete chores and workouts under their father’s regimental thumb, earning tokens to keep them engaged with simple activities and rewards, but the outside can’t be stopped from seeping in with exterior influences raising more questions than the father can keep up with lies, excuses, and fabricated stories. If he finds his children entertaining an inspiration, his immediate reaction is to manipulatively redirect or even use violence if necessary to put his children back in a stationary line, scaring them of dangers outside the home, such as the killer ferocity of a household cat as it’s curiosity that killed the cat. Or is it the other way around, did the cat kill the curiosity?
Way before his 2026 Oscar nominated film “Bugonia,” way before his quicky dark-comedic Frankenstein variation “Poor Things,” way before the shapeshifting deadline of forced relationships in “The Lobster,” offbeat and provocative Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos directed “Dogtooth,” the 2009 psychological horror-drama that displayed a disturbing power-dynamics of a nuclear family by a manipulative father of three. Lanthimos co-wrote the script alongside Efthimis Filippou, a regular collaborator with the director from Filippou’s debuting “Dogtooth” script up until 2017 psychological, life invasion thriller “The Killing of a Sacred Deer.” “Dogtooth,” or “Κυνόδοντας” in the native Greek vernacular, is filmed in the heart of Athens, coproduced between Lanthimos, Yorgos Tsourgiannis, and “Do It Yourself” producer Katerina Kaskanioti, and is a collaborated studio project of Boo Productions, Greek Film Center, and Tsourgiannis’s Horsefly Productions.
“Dogtooth” consists of a tight cast of six actors between the parents, three kids, and a security guard employed at the father’s manufacturer. Some would say Christos Stergioglou plays one of the worst manipulating parents on screen of our generation with a calm demeanor and a convincing nature while having a ferocious side of physical punishment against those going against the grain. With a small cast, those taking the beatings can be his children. “Singapore Sling’s” Michele Valley is in the mother role, an equal schemer in her abetting of the problematic parenting, but it’s quite unclear whether the Mother is either in on the Father’s paranoic protective plan or whether she too is a victim of his deceit. While she can be seen deriding her children in seldom words and violence, she too follows Father’s strange ways: pretending to be a four-legged guard dog like her kids, never leaves the house, succumbs to Father’s sexual habits, etc. The sex never extends from parent to child, leaving most of Father’s perversities kept intact by Mother and a good old fashion VHS stag tape, but there’s still exploitation done amongst the children. Treated to his own arranged woman to bed, overseen by his Father, the son’s sexual hormones and desires are made docile by the security guard Christina (Anna Kalaitzidou) from his father’s work and is seen as an act of transactional duty rather than having a presence of affection. Christos Passalis does embody his character with a young, pre-adolescent boy with tempers, sibling competitiveness, and appropriate reactions to all things that accompany a young boy. Eventually, after Christina is let go exploiting and influencing the younger daughter with sexual tradeoffs and forbidden contraband, the son is forced to have sex with one of his sisters to maintain the stability of a pure environment. Angeliki Papoulia and Mary Tsonia are the Older and Younger Daughter with similar appearances and attributes, too exemplifying childlike qualities, that make them also like twins in how they act and how they act with each other with the Eldest naturally, without purposeful intent, trying to break free of her father’s grip in the way children do – in irritational and hurtful ways. Other than Christian, none of the main principal characters have a name, leaving them to be a representation of any family of any kind out in the world. Steve Krikris, Sissi Petropoulou, and Alexander Voulgaris round out the film’s supporting parts.
Yorgos Lanthimos takes helicopter parenting to the extreme but in subtle, death-by-a-thousand cuts techniques simply by sheltering in place his entirely family for years and himself teaching his children lessons of his own fabrication. Taught the world is a dangerous place, where cats are the most feared and deadly animal who killed their exiled “brother”, the children fear what’s beyond their sprawling compound so much they don’t dare cross the gate line. Vulgar worlds like pussy are defined with innocuous objects, such as lamp light, and lesser provocative vocabulary, in this case zombie, is given the designation to little yellow flowers. The children’s minds are so brainwashed, their identity is also erased along with their names, mostly busying themselves in the same sterile clothing that evokes no emotion whatsoever. Lanthimos extends this common place sense of being into the character interactions, whether between family members or the supporting characters, that make the entire tone feel that more unsettling and perfunctory. The sexual tension is chronic, even between the siblings it’s uncomfortably prevalent, but never malicious on the surface as the acts are kept dutiful and necessary to sustain dominion over the children and perhaps even the wife despite its icky film coating. The whole idea of the titular dogtooth is a rite of passage from childhood to adulthood, the latter suppressed by the weaponization of sex, education, and threat, for when the permanent adult canine, or dogtooth as Father puts it, falls out is when a child can leave the next and in that is manipulative false hope that one day, the strongest tooth, it’s ability to rip through meat and sinew, will fall out on its own accord, essentially making the children a metaphorical dogtooth that needs forceful extraction from its rigid system of enameled manipulation.
Courtesy of Visions Home Video, a premium home media label from Vertigo Releasing, “Dogtooth” arrives on 4K UHD Blu-ray in the UK-Ireland. Presented with 2160p in the original aspect ratio of 2.39:1, the HEVC encoded BD100 has a superior encoding compared to previous models and other region 4Ks with a Yorgos Lanthimos approved transfer of the 35mm negative that’s contains and controls the grain that once had issues in previous releases with ill-defining effects on darker sections of the scene, establishing corrected contrast where intended and needed other releases failed to accomplish. A natural light grading shines through with immersive coloring from the monochromic, or achromatic, outfits to the saturation of greens of the compound estate, a dynamic range of the metadata, DolbyVision. There’s very minor speckling off some individual cells on the stock but the overall product is the best “Dogtooth” has looked and deserves it. There are a pair of audio layers available: a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and a LPCM 2.0 Stereo both in Greek with optional English subtitles. The monotonic dialogue alleviates many issues associated with these tracks as there are no inflections, tones, forced accents, or any other shaded types of vocal manipulation. The plainspoken, forth-right conversing creates a naturally prominent layer that’s clean and concentrated above all else. That’s not the say the soundtrack or the ambience drags or lacks behind though it is slightly less dynamic in its diegetic range. You won’t be fully immersed with audio hits through side or back channels, but every layer has a stronger and bolder presence than before in previous releases. Special features include a film in tandem audio commentary with stars Angeliki Papoulia and Christos Passalis, an archived interview with Yorgos Lanthimos from 2009, a 2025 London Film Festival stage interview with more in-depth insights from Lanthimos, three deleted scenes, and two original trailers. Visions home video release is a vision in itself starting with the beginning layer, a cardboard O-ring slipcover with a somewhat glossy, upscaled image of one of the female children locked behind a bar-cell of bare legs. The same image is represented as the primary sleeve art inside a Scanova case (no Blu-ray logo at the top). Inserted inside are four collectible cards of high-quality stills from the film and a double-sided folded mini-poster. The region free release is UK certified 18 for strong sex and nudity inside the duration of 97 minutes.
Last Rites: “Dogtooth’s” disturbing fan outs, spreads like an infection of manipulation, but is localized in and around the property that’s become a cage, or an invisible fence, with the latter being more poignant to the storyline with the father having them bark and be on all fours like a dog, a pet symbolism indictive of egocentric power over those one can control from the beginning. The new Visions Home Video 4K UHD release is a new and improved upgrade for any collector’s wall.
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