Lawn Dogs

Lawn Dogs is a 1997 British-American fantasy-drama film directed by John Duigan and starring Mischa Barton and Sam Rockwell. The film tells the story of a precocious young girl (Barton) from a gated community who befriends a landscape worker (Rockwell), and examines the societal repercussions of their friendship. Written by Naomi Wallace, the film was released by Rank Organisation, and was the company's last production.

The film uses the folktale of Baba Yaga as a prominent plot device. Although filmed in Louisville and Danville, Kentucky in the United States, Lawn Dogs was a British film produced by Duncan Kenworthy. Lawn Dogs won numerous film awards at film festivals in Europe and met with critical acclaim, in particular for Barton's performance.

Plot

The film focuses on 10-year-old Devon Stockard (Mischa Barton), a precocious and lonely young girl who has recently moved into a gated community called Camelot Gardens with her parents, Morton and Clare (Christopher McDonald and Kathleen Quinlan). Recently having recovered from open heart surgery, Devon is encouraged by her parents to make friends, and she is pushed to sell cookies for a charity event for the summer. While selling cookies, Devon leaves the gated community against the instruction of her mother, and meets Trent Burns (Sam Rockwell), a poor man who lives in a trailer in the woods, and who does landscaping work in Camelot Gardens. An imaginative child, Devon imagines her life to be like the fable of Baba Yaga, a fairytale which the film makes parallels to.