It's political incorrectness gone mad! Jake West's latest horror comedy romp pulls a moony at any notions that films should be caring, sharing "new man" experiences, and legs it off down the pub for twelve pints with the lads.
Vince's (Stephen Graham) divorce is getting him down. He's sinking beneath a pile of half-eaten takeaways and paperwork from the lawyers. Luckily, his mates have a plan to rescue him and head out of London to the small village of Moodley for a weekend of booze and birds. Unluckily, Moodley is filled with the most horrific, terrifying thing a group of lads could ever meet - Women. Angry, zombie women armed with cleavers, scissors, drills and... um... Zimmer frames. And there's nothing these "Zombirds" hate more than blokes. Well... live blokes. They seem quite partial to dead ones. The boys have got to think fast if they want to avoid becoming horrifically literal finger food for a bunch of rampaging undead feminists.
Doghouse should be a lot of fun. The concept rams its tongue so far into its cheek it practically licks the next guy's face. The Zombird designs are mostly excellent, ranging from the buxom sword-wielding Witch to the axe-swinging Bride in a pretty unlikely wedding dress. Genre favourite Emily Booth pops up as The Snipper, whose demented leers and worryingly sharp hairdresser's scissors will cause many guys to nervously cross their legs.
The script provides frequent laughs and is highly quotable - Stephen Graham's indignant cry of "Alright you funny cunts, how's this supposed to cheer me up?" when first confronted with the Zombirds is a prime example. The laddish banter between characters brings to mind the best points of films like Lock Stock, and never allows the tone to get too dark. It's a shame that Jake West's direction sometimes lacks the comic timing needed to pull in the big laughs, and as a result some great one-liners lack the impact they deserve.
The strong cast is uniformly excellent, with Stephen Graham's despondent Vince and Danny Dyer's relentlessly sexist Neil providing strong central characters, while Noel Clarke reveals he has excellent comic timing and looks frighteningly good in a dress. For the most part, there's a great chemistry between the guys, although you wonder why Lee Ingleby's distinctly non-laddish uber-geek Matt would hang around with a bunch of unrepentantly self-proclaimed "grunting cavemen". That said, Matt gets some of the film's best lines, and discovers an explosive new use for a water pistol and a lighter.
This should all add up to an excellent evening's entertainment, and the film often hits the spot. So it's a shame that in the quest to be as funny as Shaun Of The Dead or Severance, Doghouse lets any tension it starts to generate off the leash. With the exception of one extremely nasty scene involving Danny Dyer, a hungry Zombird and an electric carving knife, the movie feels like a pantomime. The guys bumble their way past the flesh-hungry monster women, who are about as intelligent as guards in Metal Gear Solid. Once the boys are out of sight, the Zombirds completely forget they were even there, and can easily be distracted by someone waving out of a window or driving a remote controlled car past them. There's rarely a sense of threat, and it's only towards the end of the film that the Zombirds start to develop any degree of deadly intelligence. Quite how they managed to massacre a military unit before the lads arrive is beyond me.
In fact, the portrayal of the Zombirds, and women in general, is the most contentious thing about Doghouse and is likely to split audience opinions. Although the laddish banter is mostly good natured, it occasionally crosses the line into downright nasty. When a female driver questions something early on in the film, Danny Dyer replies "What you going to do about it? You're outnumbered - Slag" - A mean spirited outburst that jars with the tone of the film up until that point. Others will take issue with the fact that there's hardly a single positive portrayal of women within the film. They're either moaning at men or are brainless creatures trying to kill them, and Vince's epiphany that "all women want men to be pets" will raise more than a few eyebrows and leave a sour taste in the mouth of quite a few viewers. For those with preconceptions that horror films are nothing but misogynistic fantasies for teenage boys, this will just reinforce every misconceived notion they have about genre cinema. But I suspect that's half the point - Jake West is quite clearly trying to wind up the PC brigade in their ivory towers in order to provoke a reaction. One thing's for sure - there'll certainly be some interesting post-film debates in the pub after the movie.
That said, as one character states, "Today is not the day to stop objectifying women". If you can handle the sexism and accept the film as a tongue in cheek romp, there's plenty of fun to be had here - If not, you may want to bring your pooper scooper. It's not quite on the same level as Shaun Of The Dead or Severance and lacks bite as a horror film, but enough bitching; Doghouse is a British Bulldog with balls, that lifts its leg and pisses all over political correctness. Just make sure you're not a cat person before you go.
Review by Paul Bird
Jake West's DOGHOUSE will be unleashed in UK cinemas across the UK from the 12th of June
| Released by Vertigo Films |