Mauled by a Dog
2024 · 18m · UK
Directed by Sion Thomas
Genres: action, dark comedy, horror
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, provocative, surreal
After a young woman has her face ripped off in an alleyway, her emasculated call-centre-worker boyfriend embarks on a surreal overnight journey through the underbelly of a South Wales Valleys town to take revenge on her attacker — a dog.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
South Wales call-centre guy goes on an overnight revenge quest after his girlfriend's face is ripped off — by a dog. Sustained tonal high-wire act between horror and dark comedy and the antagonist is a DOG. Beautiful.
A BAFTA Cymru winner sustaining a horror-comedy high-wire across the revenge-quest structure with Sophie Melville in the cast — the Sightseers and Twin Town comparisons are honest. Welsh genre cinema with proper teeth.
BAFTA CYMRU winner, 18 minutes, Short of the Week feature — applying a Welsh revenge-thriller scaffolding to "the villain is a dog" is a sustained tonal trick, and BAFTA recognition suggests Thomas didn't blink. South Wales Valleys specificity is the load-bearing element.
Reviews
Visually striking and relentlessly paced, it plunges the viewer into a chaotic, darkly comic vision of a very Welsh hell.
On the surface, it may appear overtly violent and confrontational, but a closer look reveals a thoughtful critique of the distorted ideas of masculinity many of us were raised with.
Festivals
- BFI London Film Festival 2025
- Fantastic Fest 2024
- BAFTA Cymru 2025, Best Short Film
- SXSW London 2025
- London Short Film Festival 2025