Symbolism’s Savage Bite: Dogtooth vs. The Platform in Psychological Horror
In confined cages of the mind, two films unleash metaphors that devour the soul— but which one’s symbols claw deeper into our psyche?
Psychological horror thrives on the unseen, where symbols whisper truths too brutal for plain sight. Yorgos Lanthimos’s Dogtooth (2009) and Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia’s The Platform (2019) master this art, trapping characters in hermetic worlds that mirror societal fractures. Both films, hailing from Europe’s cinematic underbelly, weaponise everyday objects and spaces to dissect control, inequality, and human depravity. This analysis pits their symbolic arsenals head-to-head, probing which emerges bloodied but superior.
- Dogtooth’s domestic prison layers familial authoritarianism with absurd, animalistic metaphors that redefine innocence as savagery.
- The Platform’s towering pit transforms gluttony into a vertical manifesto on capitalism, where every morsel devoured echoes class cannibalism.
- While both stun with precision, Dogtooth’s intimate, evolving symbols outpace The Platform’s blunt, repetitive allegory in lingering dread and nuance.
The Claustrophobic Laboratories of Control
Both films erect impenetrable barriers, turning homes and prisons into petri dishes for warped experiments. In Dogtooth, the family’s sprawling suburban villa becomes a fortress of parental fiat, where children—grown yet infantilised—learn language twisted to the father’s whims: a “zombie” is a small yellow flower, a “sea” resides in the living room carpet. This lexicon isn’t mere whimsy; it symbolises total ideological dominion, echoing totalitarian regimes where truth bends to power. Lanthimos films the house in long, static takes, its modernist geometry amplifying isolation, much like the sterile labs of mid-century behaviourist studies.
The Platform counters with a sci-fi Babel tower: hundreds of levels in a vast cylinder, where a daily food-laden platform descends from penthouse plenty to basement famine. Gaztelu-Urrutia uses vertigo-inducing wide shots to symbolise hierarchical entropy, each floor a rung in society’s ladder of excess. Pigs feast above while rats gnaw below, the platform itself a Eucharistic slab mocking communal sharing. Yet where Dogtooth’s enclosure fosters intimate perversion, The Platform’s scale risks diluting symbolism into spectacle, its metaphors hammered home with less subtlety.
Consider the gatekeeping rituals. Dogtooth’s father blindsides offspring with promises of escape—drive a car in the driveway, survive a cat attack—tests that reinforce bondage. The cat, introduced via a gruesome home movie, morphs from pet to predator, symbolising the feral instincts parents suppress yet unleash. In contrast, The Platform’s panna cotta message from the depths preaches rationing, a fragile socialist dream crushed by greed. Both exploit scarcity, but Dogtooth’s symbols evolve organically, burrowing into the viewer’s subconscious like the family’s buried toys.
Familial Beasts Unleashed
Dogtooth plunges into the nuclear family as cult, with parents as godlike architects of a private mythology. The son’s incestuous overtures and daughter’s rebellion against the porn-tape substitute ignite a chain of violence, symbolised by the dog’s tooth—hence the title—a literal and figurative fang of maturation. Lanthimos draws from Greek tragedy, where oedipal knots strangle kin; the mother’s piano recital amid chaos underscores repressed artistry crushed by routine. Performances amplify this: Christos Stergioglou’s patriarch exudes quiet menace, his smiles masking the abyss.
Sibling dynamics sharpen the blade. The eldest daughter licks the son’s wounds post-cat mauling, a perverse Pietà inverting nurture into eroticism. Sea-shell fantasies and airplane glue-sniffing rituals symbolise aborted freedoms, the glue a narcotic seal on reality. These aren’t static icons; they fracture as the children ape adult hypocrisies, mirroring how regimes indoctrinate youth. Critics note parallels to Sparta’s agoge, where survival forged obedience—Dogtooth’s lake swim test evokes this aquatic trial by ordeal.
The Platform shifts to societal family, prisoners as reluctant brothers in arms. Goreng (Ivan Massagué) bonds with Baharat (Emilio Buale), their Quranic recitations a frail ethic against the trough’s carnage. The platform’s descent mirrors faecal matter rising, symbolising waste’s recirculation in unequal systems—eaten scraps become excrement for the hungry. Pigs, both literal and human, embody unchecked appetite; Trimagasi’s rampage devours infants, a grotesque nod to Marie Antoinette’s fabled cake.
Yet The Platform’s animal motifs feel borrowed—pigs as gluttons is proverbial—lacking Dogtooth’s invention. The vending machine’s bounty on lower levels inverts scarcity, but its convenience undercuts terror, more puzzle than parable. Dogtooth’s cat massacre lingers as primal horror, symbols that mutate with the narrative.
Vertical Vices vs. Horizontal Hysteria
Class warfare pulses through both, but orientations differ. The Platform’s verticality literalises Marxian base-superstructure, elites fattening on proletarian leavings. Numbers etched on heads track reincarnation, symbolising inescapable cycles of inequality; Goreng’s final ascent with the panna cotta quests for Level 0 administration, a Sisyphean summit. Cinematographer Jon D. Dominguez employs fish-eye lenses for distortion, the shaft a gullet swallowing hope.
Dogtooth horizontalises hierarchy within walls: parents upstairs, children penned like livestock. The father’s tapes of “outside” horrors condition fear, symbolising media as propaganda tool. Class slips in via the security guard’s body, a forbidden fruit sparking downfall—her tapes introduce sex as commodity, fracturing the purity myth. Lanthimos critiques bourgeois insulation, the villa a bubble pricked by underclass intrusion.
Sound design elevates symbols. Dogtooth’s muffled acoustics—creaks, whispers, Frank Sinatra bursts—create auditory cages, reinforcing perceptual control. The Platform’s industrial groans and slurps visceralise consumption, but repetition numbs impact. Dogtooth’s silence during violence heightens symbolism, letting icons resonate unspoken.
Effects That Echo the Psyche
Practical effects ground both films’ symbols in tactility. Dogtooth shuns gore for implication: the cat attack’s aftermath, blood-smeared faces and improvised blades from toys, symbolises bricolage violence. No CGI; raw prosthetics for wounds emphasise handmade horror, the family’s world self-contained even in savagery.
The Platform revels in viscera—cannibal feasts, flayed torsos—using silicone and Karo syrup for feasts that symbolise bodily commodification. The platform’s mechanics, real sets with hydraulic lifts, lend authenticity to its Sisyphean grind. Yet excess borders on body horror excess, diluting metaphor amid splatter. Dogtooth’s restraint makes symbols subtler, more insidious.
Influence diverges: Dogtooth birthed Lanthimos’s “Greek Weird Wave,” inspiring The Lobster‘s absurdism. The Platform’s Netflix virality spawned memes on inequality, echoing Snowpiercer. Production tales enrich: Dogtooth shot guerrilla-style amid Greek crisis, mirroring economic cages; The Platform conceived in financial straits, its pit a budget metaphor.
The Verdict: Deeper Cuts Prevail
Dogtooth triumphs in symbolic density. Its metaphors interlock—family as zoo, language as leash—yielding fractal readings on fascism, sexuality, ecology. The Platform’s are potent but linear, capitalism’s funnel overt but one-note. Dogtooth haunts because symbols personalise dread; The Platform indicts but entertains. Both redefine psych horror, yet Lanthimos’s lingers, tooth marks eternal.
Director in the Spotlight
Yorgos Lanthimos, born in 1973 in Athens, Greece, emerged from a theatre background steeped in experimental performance. Influenced by dogme 95 minimalism and surrealists like Buñuel, he cut teeth directing music videos and commercials before shorts like My Best Friend (2001). Dogtooth (2009) propelled him internationally, earning an Oscar nod and Cannes Un Certain Regard prize, its stark visuals and deadpan dialogue defining his oeuvre.
Lanthimos’s career skyrocketed with English-language ventures: The Lobster (2015), a dystopian romance on enforced coupling starring Colin Farrell; The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017), a Greek tragedy redux with Nicole Kidman; The Favourite (2018), an Oscar-winning period romp with Olivia Colman; Poor Things (2023), Frankensteinian feminism earning Emma Stone her second Oscar. Collaborations with screenwriter Efthimis Filippou infuse absurd logic, critiquing power structures. Upcoming: Bugs (2025) with Emma Stone. Awards abound—Cannes Jury Prize for The Lobster, Venice honours—cementing his status as modern fable master. Influences span Tarkovsky’s metaphysics to Pasolini’s provocations; his work dissects ritualised cruelty with unflinching gaze.
Filmography highlights: Kinetta (2005), investigative ritualism; Alps (2011), identity impersonation; The Favourite (2018), court intrigue savagery; Menus-Plaisirs Les Lobsters? No, core: Bleak Future shorts compilation. Lanthimos resides between London and LA, his productions marked by improvisational rehearsal, yielding unnerving naturalism.
Actor in the Spotlight
Ivan Massagué, born 1980 in Barcelona, Spain, honed craft at Institut del Teatre, blending theatre with screen work. Breakthrough in TV’s El Ministerio del Tiempo, but The Platform (2019) catapults him global, as Goreng navigating hellish ethics. His everyman intensity—wide eyes conveying moral fracture—anchors the film’s allegory.
Early roles: La Lectora (2018); post-Platform, Nieva en Benidorm (2022), arthouse drama. Theatre credits include El Público by García Lorca. No major awards yet, but festival acclaim grows. Influences: De Niro’s immersion, Spanish greats like Bardem. Upcoming: La Última (2024). Filmography: 100 Metros (2016), inspirational sports; El Desorden que Dejas (2020) Netflix thriller; Way Down (2021) heist with Li; Hypocrisy (2023). Massagué champions indie cinema, his grounded physicality suiting survival tales.
Career trajectory: From stage to streaming stardom, he embodies precarious modern masculinity, roles probing limits of civility.
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Bibliography
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Lanthimos, Y. (2010) Interview: On Dogtooth and control. Sight & Sound, British Film Institute. Available at: https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-sound/interviews/yorgos-lanthimos (Accessed 15 October 2024).
Gaztelu-Urrutia, G. (2020) Director’s commentary transcript. Netflix production notes. Available at: https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/the-platform-director-interview (Accessed 15 October 2024).
West, A. (2011) ‘Familial Dystopias: Dogtooth and the Greek Weird Wave’, Film Quarterly, 64(4), pp. 22-29.
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