THE STORY – Rotoscoped animation depicts a 17th century witch trial in Livonia that uncovers a werewolf within a devout community.
THE CAST – Agate Krista, Einars Repse, Jurgis Spulenieks & Regnars Vaivars
THE TEAM – Lauris Abele, Raitis Abele (Directors/Writers), Ivo Briedis & Harijs Grundmanis (Writers)
THE RUNNING TIME – 92 Minutes
If nothing else, Lauris Abele and Raitis Abele’s “Dog of God” has a great concept: In a seventeenth-century village in Swedish Livonia, a pastor arrests the local barmaid for witchcraft, only to be confronted by a man at her trial claiming to be a werewolf sent by God, carrying the Devil’s balls. Presented in a rotoscoped style, the film plays like a bad trip, opening with a somewhat cryptic scene involving the werewolf and The Devil and including lots of naughty behavior that we typically don’t see in animation. Unfortunately, the Abeles don’t have anything new or interesting to say about their subject, relying on the animation to cover up the fact that their screenplay isn’t much more than rehashed tropes of witchcraft accusation stories. How you feel about the film as a whole will largely depend on how you respond to that animation style – if you like it, then the film will play much better than if you don’t.
The trippy look of rotoscope animation, which relies on artists tracing over a film frame-by-frame, is an odd choice for a dark historical drama like this, but given that the werewolf stuff tips things ever so slightly into horror, it’s not as counterintuitive a choice as you might think. The opening sequence feels like something straight out of “Heavy Metal,” and the film returns to that well quite often, completely unafraid to get straight-up sexual, gratuitously violent, and just plain weird. That trippy feel carries the film a long way, but rotoscope animation has its limits, and if you care about performance even in an animated film, “Dog of God” is a bear to watch. Rotoscope tends to flatten out human emotion, and the human performers here vary wildly between small and subtle (Agate Krista as barmaid Neze) and overly performative (Jurgis Spulenieks as crippled altar boy Klibis), sometimes even in the same performance (Regnars Vaivars as the self-flagellating pastor Bukholcs). When it’s not indulging in trippy visuals, “Dog of God” can be a bit grating to watch because of the wildly varying performance styles and how the animation style naturally wipes away much of the good work the actors are doing. You can feel some of the performers going badly overboard with their voice work, likely because they understood they would have to heighten the emotions they were playing. They didn’t need to, though, as the Abeles have stuffed the film with enough atmosphere that dialogue almost becomes unnecessary at points.
Indeed, the film is at its best when the characters stop talking, and the film’s striking visuals take over storytelling duties. While the film’s many wordless sequences can sometimes be difficult to follow (the opening scene first among them), the expressionistic use of color and angles conveys all the emotion needed to feel what the characters are feeling. The film drips with melancholy, at times poisonous atmosphere, doing as good a job of transporting the audience back to the mental state of the time and place as a live-action film. The bleak landscapes and thunderstorms provide just the right amount of turmoil to make up for the flatter performances, dialing up the angst and dread as appropriate for a tale of the fight between puritanical religion and paganistic naturalism.
Unfortunately, the film’s screenplay doesn’t do much with these themes that we haven’t seen before. It’s not done poorly, but a lot of the dialogue and ideas at play feel uninspired, only gaining interest when the animation leans into the trippiness of its look. The werewolf is the only place where the film feels new and interesting, but he’s sidelined for most of the film’s first half as the Abeles introduce the setting and characters. After the first scene, the werewolf – closer in concept to the Latvian folkloric tradition of a mad shaman than a full-on shapeshifting man-beast – disappears, and even after his intriguing re-entry to the story, he disappears for long stretches, watching silently as the townsfolk debase themselves even further. Still, every scene in which the werewolf appears contains more interest than those without him, mainly because the idea of a self-proclaimed “dog of God” who fights demons to protect the crops and peasants of the land feels fresh and exciting. Since he doesn’t end up doing much more than setting the events in motion that lead to the film’s climax, it can lead to the whole enterprise feeling like a missed opportunity.
However, the uniqueness of the film’s look and feel goes a long way towards overcoming that, ultimately making the film feel more radical than it actually is. At times, the prurience of the film’s images can feel a bit childish in their provocations, but they retain a certain sick kick thanks to the stylized animation and the blaring synth score. While not everything in “Dog of God” works, the things that do make it easy to recommend to people longing for something unique. While the themes at play are well-worn, the presentation is anything but, and that’s enough to make this a worthy watch.
