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Review by Jack Foley |
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DVD SPECIAL FEATURES: Director, Cast and Crew Commentary; Producer's Commentary;
Deleted scenes; 'Making of' Dog Soldiers; Gag Reel; B Roll footage; Storyboards;
Photo Gallery; Theatrical trailers.
TAKE six pissed-off British squaddies, place them in a wood infested with
werewolves, throw in a now-obligatory vest-wearing feisty female and a nice
line in pitch black humour and what have you got? One of the best British
horror movies to come along in quite some time, actually.
Cliche-ridden it may be, and with some truly appalling dialogue at times,
Dog Soldiers is nevertheless a winning take on the werewolf genre, packed
with cinematic references, blood-thirsty set pieces and some well-executed
shocks.
Sean Pertwee (of Event Horizon fame) plays the leader of the troop, a dedicated
career-soldier who is totally unprepared for the horrors which lay ahead,
as is his unit, a rag-tag bunch of bickering squaddies who would rather be
back in the UK watching England take on Germany.
The trouble begins when they stumble into the blood-spattered camp of a special
operations unit and find only one survivor - Liam Cunningham's stiff-upper
lipped but sadistic Captain Ryan - who begs them to get him out. But it gets
quickly worse as, with only 30 minutes of daylight remaining and a dodgy radio,
they find themselves surrounded by the insatiable pack of hungry carnivores.
Even a surprise rescue by Emma Cleasby's gutsy local zoologist offers only
a temporary reprieve, as the disbelieving soldiers find themselves holed-up
in a remote farmhouse with no means of communication, a full moon above and
precious little silver-tipped ammunition to equip them til dawn.
First-time writer-director Neil Marshall takes a fairly familiar premise,
borrows from several other locations - Predator, Aliens, An American Werewolf
in London, Southern Comfort and The Evil Dead being among them - and still
manages to turn out a movie which remains fresh and exciting throughout.
And while not everything works - there are occasional lapses in logic, the
aforementioned tacky dialogue and some amazing acts of stupidity, such as
standing with backs to windows or going off alone - Marshall should be applauded
for the enthusiasm he has brought to the project, barely giving the audience
time to draw breath in between attacks and producing some well-conceived and
very bloody set pieces (how the film escaped with a 15-certificate is a bit
of a mystery).
His cast is also superb, with Pertwee making a credible father-figure, Kevin
McKidd a suitably brow-beaten hero and the likes of Darren Morfitt and Chris
Robson providing the type of supporting players which audiences can actually
root for (rather than merely waiting to die).
And
given that this is a Brit-flick (shot in Luxembourg instead of Scotland) and
therefore cannot make use of the mega-budget, CGI-backed Hollywood special-effects
teams, it is quite pleasing to be able to report that the grisly wolf pack
is particularly impressive, as are some of the latter transformations, while
the movie as a whole only occasionally feels like the low-budget flick that
it is.
All in all, this should have horror fans howling in delight, rather than with
derision.
