Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. Starring Christos Stergioglou, Michele Valley, Aggeliki Papoulia, Christos Passalis, Mary Tsoni, Anna Kalaitzidou 18 cert, limited release, 97 min

HERE IS an odd, troubling, original film that creeps up on you slowly, before slipping something slimy down the back of your underpants. It’s the sort of picture that works all the better if you know nothing about it – the weird scenario develops that stealthily, you see – so, if you wish to preserve your innocence, put down the review and make your way to the cinema.

The second feature from young Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos concerns itself with a very, very strange family.

The sinister patriarch has taken protectiveness to psychotic proportions, detaining his son and two daughters in a bland house with a large, depressingly soulless garden.

As far as the teenagers are concerned, the outer world is a place characterised by societal decay and rampaging danger. According to Monster Dad, cats are savage beasts and aircraft really are the size they appear in the sky. To prove this latter point, he plants a toy jet in the back garden.

The only outsider allowed within the compound is a female colleague of the domestic despot. Hired to provide the son with sexual release, she inevitably ends up spreading a degree of disruption about the place. The younger family members start to get dangerously inquisitive.

You can search for influences – there is something of Luis Buñuel about the piece – but Lanthimos has developed a tone that is all his own. Initially somewhat farcical, Dogtoothgradually allows the true ghastliness of the situation to reveal itself.

As the layers of barely repressed violence and patriarchal totalitarianism become apparent, a growing sense of nausea (not much relieved by the oppressively cold visuals) overpowers this strange, strange film. Yet it remains funny throughout. Lord knows what Yorgos is trying to tell us, but his film remains one of those rare beasts that ever-so-slightly reinvents the medium.