Dogs and cats kenneled at the 29th edition of the Fantasia International Film Festival (“Fantasia”).
Anadromatic and inversive at its core, Dog of God (2025) is a provocative animation of Hell holding up a dark and grotesque mirror to Heaven. From its initial castration to its final transmogrified confrontation, Dog of God atmospherically conjures a 17th century witch trial in the Swedish Livonian village of Zaube using imaginative and beautifully-hued rotoscoped animation by Harijs Grundmanis. Phantasmagoric, feverish, orgiastic, perverse and unabashedly adult, Dog of God may not have the family draw of its Latvian co-hort Oscar® winner Flow, but—in my estimation—far exceeds Flow in narrative scope and technical execution. It is clearly a labor of love (or should I say lust?) from the Ābele brothers: Lauris serves as co-director, co-writer, composer and co-editor; Raitis as producer, co-director, co-writer, and co-editor; and Marcis as cinematographer.
As synopsized by Rupert Bottenberg for Fantasia: “In late 17th-century Livonia (the Baltic region, on modern-day maps), rule over a dismal, nameless backwater town is shared between a domineering priest and a decadent baron, each with his own cringing lackey to carry out their dishonorable errands. When a holy relic precious to the pastor vanishes, he casts blame upon the object of his secret lust, the tough but lovely tavern-keeper whose clandestine dabbling in esoteric medicinal alchemy invites suspicions of witchcraft. Meanwhile, an uncouth, otherworldly figure drifts ever closer to the town, bearing a gift of sorts, one sure to upend what faint traces of normalcy remain—the torn-off testicles of the Devil himself!”
As detailed at the film’s website: “The plot of the film Dog of God by the Ābele brothers is rooted in a historical event: the most famous werewolf trial in Northern Europe, the case of Thiess of Kaltenbrun, in which an 82-year-old man bravely declared himself a werewolf or a Dog of God during a trial in a church, recounting his battles against witches and wizards in the depths of hell.”
In other words, the werewolf in Dog of God is more shamanic than lycanthropic and is an agent of God rather than the Devil. I’m not sure what kind of distribution Dog of God can achieve in the United States whose Christian posturing resembles the cruel and hypocritical priest in Dog of God way too much, but it deserves widespread recognition for its scriptural and visual accomplishments and I sincerely hope it gains the audience it deserves.
Within the same domain of moon-jangled transmogrifications is the Fantasia World Premiere of Brock Bodell’s Hellcat (2025), commendable for the slow burn of its first half and the solid performances of its two main actors: Dakota Gorman, as Lena (a kidnapped woman who awakens inside a moving trailer unsure of how she got there and why she is wounded), and her captor Clive who seems genuinely concerned with helping her. Said performances competently carry the film to its conclusion, though murky cinematography and idle practical effects unfortunately weaken its final sequences.
