Critic Reviews

Be forewarned: Dog Days, like many of Seidel's films, will drive some moviegoers to rage and walkouts with its unrelentingly depressing tone. But it also a remarkable, deeply disturbing work by a brilliant filmmaker.

An acid portrait of contemporary Austria (and by extension, the whole middle class) as unspeakably dull, violent and stupid. The film itself, miraculously, is just the opposite: vibrantly inventive, aesthetically rigorous, sardonic and occasionally quite brilliant.

The believability comes from the casting: he has found a group of actors and nonprofessionals who interact spectacularly well.

Dog Days has much in common with "Code Unknown" -- both dart among several characters who may occasionally cross paths.

His (Seidl) camera is shocking in its intimacy, his film surprisingly casual in its depiction of extreme behavior and the randomness of violence.

Looks very much like a documentary: It's grainy and raw, and Seidl's actors -- a mix of actors and non-professionals -- are often unglamorously posed under what appears to be natural light.

Willfully provocative, much like a small child performing outrageous acts just to get some attention.

Dog Days is in fact a bleak but deeply felt humanism -- a yearning that we might all learn to better love our neighbors and, perhaps more importantly, ourselves.

Strangely entertaining.

Dog Days adheres dogmatically to the school of sado-miserablism that Seidl's compatriots Michael Haneke and Jessica Hausner have turned into something of a national industry (non-Austrian adherents abound too, from Gaspar Noé to Harmony Korine).