40
Visceral and inquisitive, this well researched movie offers a punchy insight to prison life. Unfortunately, it is a familiar and tepid storyline.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
40
Dog Pound only rarely finds the live-wire energy needed to make up for its amateur cast and staunch adherence to well-worn archetypes: cell-block bullies, sadistic guards, fresh-fish innocents, etc. Neither the film’s bark nor its bite leaves much of a mark.
83
Chapiron stubbornly avoids an uplifting message, portraying his dangerous setting as a demonstration of virility that leads to madness.
50
The Hollywood Reporter by Frank Scheck
Although it has a visceral intensity, this teen-centered prison movie doesn't avoid the familiar tropes of its genre.
60
The New York Times by Jeannette Catsoulis
Kim Chapiron, proves an excellent choreographer of brutality...But without a strong political point (unlike its source material), Dog Pound feels hollow and hopeless.
63
Slant Magazine by Joseph Jon Lanthier
The plot willfully denies our satisfaction, often at the risk of compromising its own structural integrity.
60
Perhaps this tells us nothing new about life on the inside in the US (there are rapes, riots and suicides), but it at least handles its brief with pace and precision.