Set in the Scottish highlands, the inexpressibly splendid Dog Soldiers proves three things:
1. Despite recent Hollywood attempts to bury the genre, the werewolf movie ain’t dead.
2. A talented filmmaker can do true wonders with very little.
3. There is no movie that Sean Pertwee doesn’t automatically make better. (See also: Ian Holm and Liam Cunningham, who is also in Dog Soldiers — doubleplusgood!)
Sgt. Wells (Pertwee), alongside the resourceful Cooper (Trainspotting’s Kevin McKidd, also fantastic), leads a regiment of ragtag soldiers on a routine training exercise (“I expect nothing less than gratuitous violence from the lot of you!”). Before long, they find themselves to be pawns in a Special Ops scheme to capture an actual werewolf, and have to hole up in a farmhouse to fend off a very hungry, very determined, well-nigh unstoppable family of lycanthropes.
In his directorial debut, Neil Marshall (The Descent) makes the most of a negligible budget to deliver a breathless horror movie along the lines of Aliens meets The Howling. It is very likely the best thing to ever appear on the then-called Sci-Fi Channel, including the 2004 Battlestar Galactica series. The casting is top-notch, Marshall keeps the tension high, and the monsters (beautiful practical effects, no CGI American Werewolf in Paris garbage here) are kept dimly lit, disguising their limitations and becoming genuinely eerie.
Combined with a tight script chock full of offbeat allusions to Star Trek II and The Matrix (among others), the end result is an endlessly entertaining slam-bang horror actioneer, and the best werewolf movie in a dog’s age. Bonus marks: During a scene of meatball surgery, Pertwee screams “Sausages!” at the sight of his own entrails. Just. Freaking. Perfect. —Corey Redekop
neil Marshall is one of a handfull of Directors who alway impressed me. I love Dog Soldiers. The Desent is a very destrubing movie in all the best way a Horror film can be Distrubing. Centurion is one of the best Historical films in recent years. It fun in way that others film are not. (Compare to the Recent film The Eagle)
I even like Doomday. I once got into a agruement over the merits of Doomday at a Science Fiction Convention. A friend agrue that it was a series of rip off of other better Sci Fi films. I pointed out that by the same arguement Kill Bill was a rip off of 1970’s gridhouse films and Japanese Samurei films. Doomday like all of Marshall films have a great cast, playing interesting Characters. Yes the action are Homages to other films but it fun to see what comes next and Marshall does a great job recreating each homage.
Caught this a couple of years ago and loved it. My favorite part is where the one soldier is trapped in the kitchen and fends off a werewolf with a couple of frying pans. He nearly succeeds until…
Well, I won’t ruin it for anyone, but needless to say, the whole movie is one plot twist after another.