Like Dogs 2021

Lisa is abducted off the street by two men in a white van and hauled to a stark facility where she is strapped to a gurney, drugged, and left in a small concrete space fitted with a dog bed, an animal water bottle, and a neck chain. The room is mercilessly controlled, and a figure known as the Hallucination Kennel Master, played by [Alan Maxson], oversees the operation. The captive is fed chipped beef from a dog bowl, and the environment immediately communicates that she is treated as less than human—an unsettling setup that blurs the line between confinement and experiment.

As she tests the limits of compliance, she misbehaves by dumping the food, refusing to eat, and slamming the bowl against the wall. The notes describing interventions grow more clinical with each incident, including baths and a remote‑controlled choke collar that tightens to restrict breathing. The system is meticulous, and every small act of defiance is met with a procedural response, creating a chilling rhythm of control and resistance.

Adam appears at the far end of the line of kennels, a newcomer who has already spent time here and is similarly restrained. It becomes clear that the food is drugged, producing either vivid hallucinations or deep sleep depending on how she behaves, and the pair slowly begins to learn each other’s rhythms. The room, the collars, and the altered perception all weave a shared experience that forges a dangerous bond between the two captives. Adam has his own quiet intelligence, and Lisa notices a glimmer of hope in their growing connection.

The two prisoners slowly build trust as they navigate the harsh regime. When Adam misbehaves, both are shocked with electric prods and separated, only to be reunited when the authorities deem it appropriate. Over time, the doses and the confinement become a strange test of their compatibility, and the notes imply a calculated plan to merge them into a single unit, with Lisa cast as the supposed alpha in the arrangement. The dynamic shifts from mere survival to a conscious strategy to endure together and stage a smarter, shared response to their captors.

A tense moment of attempted escape unfolds when Adam seizes the pole used to push their food and strikes a guard, knocking them unconscious and stealing the keys to unlock both themselves. But the collars remain a cruel restraint. In a decisive turn, Lisa uses her bowl to strike Adam, knocking him out, and then she yells, >Mayday. This moment crystallizes the danger of the experiment and the cost of any imagined freedom.

What follows reveals a cruel twist: this entire sequence was an experiment that [the captive woman] had helped to design in collaboration with the university, funded by a grant, and it involved the people who shaped her earlier life and its traumas. The layers of manipulation become clearer as the project’s ethics crumble under scrutiny, exposing a system that traded consent for data and control.

With the ceiling of the yard in sight, the plan shifts as the captors feed into a game of power and compromise. The project handlers pull them inside and strap them to tables in separate rooms within the East Wing, disabling cameras and injecting hallucinogens to trigger panic. The higher‑ups—Dr. Fischer—are alerted to the drugging and the lack of proper consent paperwork, complicating the moral landscape of the experiment. The confrontation escalates as Dr. Fischer is confronted about missing documentation and the illicit administration of medications, and a desperate struggle ensues that ends with Dr. Fischer being eliminated.

Erika grows suspicious of the operation and attempts to escape the professor’s control, but she discovers the dead body and is forcibly subdued. The truth surfaces when the project’s orchestrator uses his tools to restrain Erika and Lisa, forcing them to watch as he lays out the brutal history of the abuse, including the life‑shattering manipulation that has defined Lisa’s memories and choices. In a chilling revelation, the director shows Lisa a wall of her former partners, a gallery that reminds her that some of these men call her Ashley, Natalie, and even Lisa herself—a reminder of the manipulation that has shaped her identity.

The captors offer Lisa a ghastly choice: which captive to choke to death while the other remains trapped and exposed to the clockwork cruelty of the collar. The tension peaks as the choice is made, and the director’s preference for a certain fate becomes clear. Lisa outsmarts him by biting his lip, seizing the keys, and freeing both herself and Erika. They turn the tables, tying the captor to a gurney and shocking him with a prod until his choke collar seals his fate.

In the final act of defiance, Lisa strikes Erika in the head to sever the control she represents and ensures Erika can’t be redrawn into the scheme. The two escape into a night they can barely contain, with Lisa donning Erika’s glasses and clothes as they flee the building, which burns behind them. The image of Erika crawling out of the burning doorway in the end credits scene lingers, a stark reminder that survival here comes at a brutal cost and that identity, once manufactured, must be rebuilt from the ashes.