Like Dogs

Two strangers, Adam and Lisa, are abducted, drugged and subjected to a horrifying experiment in which they are treated like dogs. I saw this on Prime, looked like a possible torture movie, a genre that we do not see so much of these days. Straight away the low budget and production values are obvious but at 28 minutes the plot takes a major and perplexing twist. At one point a character says "I don't like the direction that this (swear word that starts with s) show is going", I could not agree more! The acting is poor with Ryan Q Tran (who plays nutty George) being especially abysmal. There are two reasons why I have scored this a 2 instead of a 1 out of 10 and they are that Annabel Barrett as Lisa looks pretty hot in her vest and tight shorts plus there are a few gory moments (though the effects are very cheap). Watching this garbage is about as pleasurable as accidentally stepping in dog poop and having to clean it off your shoe and carpet. Awful! Like Dog Poo would be a more apt title.

Boy...someone really has some spare time on their hands. Movie is garbage.

Old joke in film class is that the cheapest indie to make is filming two people talking on a park bench. God provides the lighting, the park provides the set, and luck provides the stars. In this one, it looks at first glance like Randy Van Dyke is going for the Guinness Record in cheap indies ... and then the twists come. Taking a page from the Joss Whedon school of genre deconstruction, Van Dyke keeps things moving briskly, making sure the viewer never gets bored. And that, in a nutshell, is the charm of this oddball extreme-low-budget production.

I sat down to watch the 2021 thriller "Like Dogs" from writer and director Randy Van Dyke here in 2022 without ever having heard about the movie. So I wasn't sure what I was getting myself into, but it being labeled a horror/thriller was sufficient to make me have an interest in the movie. And also since I hadn't already seen it, of course I opted to do so.

And while "Like Dogs" definitely was off to a killer start and maintained the suspense for a good long way, I have to say that the steam started to vanish from the kettle once it was revealed what was actually going on. Sure, I was a bit thrown off by the reveal, but thought 'hey, why not? We can work with that' and continued on with the movie. However, by the time you get to the laughable ending, the movie had gone from good to being one where you just shrug your shoulders. A shame really, because "Like Dogs" had a lot of potential.

"Like Dogs" is a movie that clearly is a low budget movie, and it shows on the screen. I will say, however, that the first third part of the movie was definitely working out quite well, despite this being a low budget production, so thumbs up to the movie crew on that accomplishment.

I wasn't familiar with the cast ensemble in "Like Dogs", and that is something I do enjoy in movies. And yeah, it was working to the movie's advantage here as well. Just don't expect to be in for an evening of Shakespearian performances and you'll be set.

I found "Like Dogs" to be a semi-watchable movie. It was adequate enough for a single viewing, if you can look past the downhill slide that the movie was on. But that is one of the problems with "Like Dogs", it is a movie that you watch once and then never again.

My rating of "Like Dogs" lands on a four out of ten stars.

I understand that it's a low budget movie and I don't have any problem with that since it has a pretty interesting topic. But I still had to rate 1 because of the main character's (Lisa) acting. No exaggeration, I've never seen a worse acting in my entire life and since she's the main character, it's ruining all of the movie experience. Yeah sure, none of the actors are doing a good job overall but at least they're not doing as bad job as Lisa. Her body language, face expressions, everything is overacting and feels like you're watching a movie from 80's where acting wasn't as develop as the 21st century. I still think the idea is pretty good, even the writing isn't too bad, so it could've been a striking movie with a high-budget production. Shout-out to all writers and whoever came up with the idea and to all of the actors, please take no offense but just a constructive criticism.

Oh and lastly, I'd enjoy the scenario more if it was more wrapped up around the 'experiment' instead of the psychopathic love triangle. Like how the experiment would actually go and what kind of insights we would get from it. That was my expectation before starting the movie.