The Plague Dogs

I was made aware of this movie from a YouTube video that talked about how bleak and harrowing this was. Two dogs escape from a laboratory and are relentlessly pursued by the authorities due to the possibility of them having been exposed to the bubonic plague. An animated movie made explicitly not for kids. I was fascinated. When the credits rolled, and I saw that it was from the same author that did Watership Down, my heart sank. I found that movie's brutality and horror grossly over-hyped. I was sure I was in for that again. That turned out to be an understatement, as The Plague Dogs was about as harrowing as a trip to a farmer's market. I've been more terrified working in a mall on Black Friday. Two problems completely ruin the tension of The Plague Dogs. The first is the voice acting. There are famous actors doing voice work in here. Sir John Hurt is one of the two main dogs. I know he can act. I don't need to convince you of that. But if you listened to this, you'd never know it. I swear the director slipped the cast some Percocets and a fifth of Glenlivet before recording. There is almost no emotional range whatsoever exhibited by the voice cast. It doesn't matter if the dogs are stalking a sheep, running away from someone with a gun, or struggling to find shelter during a snowstorm. Any excitement, any tension, any sense of urgency the visuals may be trying to impart is obliterated by performances that sound like someone double-checking their shopping list to make sure they got everything. It doesn't help that Plague Dogs is wordy as all hell, so not only is the threat of being lulled into a glazed-eye stupor just on tone alone present, the verbal avalanche will almost certainly inspire one to take a nap. And then there's the plot, or lack thereof. Dogs look for a place to be taken in or get food, something happens, they run, find a new place, and the cycle begins anew. It's like The Walking Dead's first several seasons, only told with dogs. There's only so many times the same story loop can circle around again, and The Plague Dogs is here to find the outermost limit. This was tiresome in the way that not being able to sleep at night and then trying to will yourself to sleep is tiresome. I'll say the art is unique, even if it is on occasion muddy or hard to follow, but that may also be because my brain was being gently coaxed into shutting down by the metronome-like line delivery of dialogue that rivals the length of the Manhattan phone book. And I appreciate that the dogs aren't given cutesy, Disney-like personalities, even if they take on far too many human behaviors over time. But this movie is far too boring and dull to endure those minor bright spots. I didn't find Watership Down nearly as traumatic as its reputation says it is, but it was still watchable. This was an exquisite slow motion torture.