Film

Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
 

Doghouse (2009)

Director: Jake West

3
Average user rating
No reviews

Movie review

From Time Out London

You wait ages for a horror movie in which beery, unreconstructed blokes are set upon by sexy man-eating women, and then two come along. However, the contrast between Horne and Corden’s bloodless, laugh-free ‘Lesbian Vampire Killers’ and Jake West’s gory, funny ‘splatstick’ comedy could not be more stark. The magic ingredient here is Dan Schaffer’s sly script, which constantly undercuts the film’s inherently sexist premise.

In ‘LVK’, a bloke took his recently dumped ex-mate to a remote country village, where they were set upon by blood-sucking lesbians; in ‘Doghouse’, a bunch of blokes take their recently divorced pal to a remote village, where they are set upon by flesh-eating ‘Zombirds’. The crucial difference is, while ‘LVK’ celebrated its protagonists’ leery lad-mag misogyny, ‘Doghouse’ points up the Neanderthal blokes’ deep Freudian fear of being castrated by women. ‘This is the day you rediscover your inner bloke,’ says Neil (a typecast Danny Dyer) to his despondent pal Vince (Stephen Graham). But in order to become a born-again bloke, Vince and his mates must face a horde of ‘pissed-off man-hating feminist cannibals’.

West sails dangerously close to indulging the sexism he aims to mock: many of the Zombirds are dressed like strippers or porn fantasy figures. But then Schaffer throws in an ironic line like: ‘Now is not the time to stop objectifying women,’ and the dick swings the other way. And you’d have to be barking mad not to cheer when the lairy lads risk life and limb to save their gay pal Graham from the Zombirds’ nest.

Author: Nigel Floyd 2009-06-09 11:02:53

Time Out London Issue 2025, June 11 - 17, 2009

  • Print this page
  • Send to a friend

What do you think?
Post your review now

clear rating
Min 1 star. Zero stars will be treated as unrated.

*mandatory fields


Doghouse

Cast & crew

Director: Jake West

Cast: Danny Dyer, Stephen Graham, Noel Clarke, Terry Stone, Christina Cole full cast

Genre(s): Horror

Duration: 89 mins


Features

Making a name for himself

Making a name for himself

Sin Nombre's Cary Joji Fukunaga learned his lessons well.

To the letter

Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.

Mind over matter

David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.

Fool's gold

Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.

We are the championed

Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."

A history of violence

Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.

True romantic

James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.

Playing in the dark

MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.

Junk bonds

Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.