Dog Pound

Prison as a hothouse for untapped aggression is again the order of the day in this snarling but predictable survival tale in which we follow three teenage tykes as they navigate their way through ‘juvie’. Heavily inspired by Alan Clarke’s ‘Scum’, the film recasts Ray Winstone’s iconic, jowly ‘daddy’ as the vaguely preppy firecracker Butch (Adam Butcher – highly watchable), whose tormenters discover his anger-management issues via the business end of a tin mug. Director Kim Shapiron channels Larry Clark’s interest in adolescent nihilism and impulsiveness in his depiction of these youths and draws on his experiences of horror (2006’s ‘Sheitan’) for a sense of doom. Technique aside, the material brings little new to the prison movie, working standard moral panics about prison as a questionable tool for rehab and always a bit too ready to quash any hope under its standard-issue boot heel.