Dogtooth (Giorgos Lanthimos, 2009)

9/10
Well-to-do parents raise their son and two daughters (all young adults) in a gorgeous, fenced-in house outside the city, teaching them that zombies are little yellow flowers, toy planes in the backyard grass are the ones they see in the sky that have fallen to earth, and that they may only leave home when their dogtooth has fallen out (left or right, it doesn't matter). Director and co-writer Giorgos Lanthimos eviscerates the idea of the family unit and the way we're raised and does it so effortlessly, as if this were a documentary study of an actual family on some other planet. Overall I found this film genuinely harrowing, and the morbid black comedy undercurrent only underscores how disturbing the whole thing is. This is squarely in Haneke/Funny Games territory, so you can use that as a barometer if you like. A couple of overtly shocking scenes, while extremely effective as you watch the movie, have me thinking the day after that maybe Lanthimos is trying a bit too hard to be memorable. But my stomach was in knots hours after seeing it, so job well done then.
Special mention should be made for the actors who played the three kids (two of the three non-professionals), especially the girls, who are brilliant.