Dog Soldiers
Released: November 5, 2002 (Video)

Genre: Action, Horror
Studio: Artisan Entertainment
Director: Neil Marshall
Screenwriter: Neil Marshall
Starring: Sean Pertwee, Kevin McKidd, Emma Cleasby, Liam Cunningham, Thomas Lockyer, Darren Morfitt, Chris Robson
MPAA Rating: R (for strong violence/gore and language)
Official Website: DogSoldiers.co.uk
Buy The DVD at Amazon 

Plot Summary: A squad of British soldiers is sent out on maneuvers into the wilds of Scotland. They thought the worst they had to worry about was missing the biggest football match of the decade, but what should have been a routing military exercise turns into a nightmare.

Reviewed by Peter Veugelaers © 2003
- Who said they don't make 'em like they used to?

"Dog Soldiers" might blow away those pre-conditioned notions surrounding the innocent sounding stories of the three bears and the teddy bears picnic, at least for a couple of hours. When a squadron of British soldiers on training in the Scottish Highlands face the inimitable terror of werewolves it is like one of those bedtime stories about bears mum or dad told us but taken to the extreme and told vividly.

This is at heart a subtle black comedy shifting comfortably halfway though to effective horror suspense. For the first half-hour "Dog Soldiers" is the antithesis to the usual serious treatment of soldiering. Laugh out loud moments are the mainstay of the beginning, a hilarious take on the machismo persona of the military. They are boys in men’s bodies, cardboard cutout caricatures, laughably incompetent but who act with an air of thinking they know what they are doing. When you get on the characters’ side it is not so much identifying with them emotionally, but instead the play on the audiences’ primal fear and instinct to protect themselves is what makes viewers want the soldiers to survive the attack of killer werewolves.

The violence is mainly shotgun shooting and there is some cartoonish gore, and the aesthetic quality of a relentless pace because of skilled photography and editing creates visceral tension. The ending neatly rounds-off the underlining dark comedy and reiterates the only semi-serious idea in the film that the reality of the extra-ordinary and supernatural is greater than we think - and that there are more important things to worry about than England’s favorite sport soccer.

Writer and Director Neil Marshall in his debut film has done something similar to Peter Jackson’s 1988 film Bad Taste, but better; an off-beat, quirky, funny, at times satirical, and enjoyable escapist fantasy with a brain.