Dog Soldiers (2002) Starring Sean Pertwee, Kevin McKidd & Emma Cleasly Directed by Neil Marshall Written by Neil Marshall

Personally, werewolf movies have not been my favorite. I tend to lean towards the vampire genre. Perhaps because vampires still manage to maintain a vestige of seductive class, even as they are consuming your life force. Regardless, vampires have always held a greater level of sophistication, but werewolves maintain a guttural, base appeal to horror fans. A primal return to the foundations of our very base selves.

Underworld, while not a movie I cared for, did a fairly decent job of giving the werewolf a greater appearance of humanity but these hairy ones still wound up being considered the “bad guy”.

By the way, I was very curious to see the length and breadth of werewolf style moves so I did an internet search. True to my friend’s assertion that there is a porn movie of everything, there is actually a werewolf porn movie. Nothing like some naked hairy men with fangs to make for interesting sex, eh?

Dog Soldiers has some scary looking bad ass werewolves, who are actually homesteaders and carry on lives that appear normal in every way.

If fangs, funky British humor and some fierce gore are your thing, then Dog Soldiers is the movie to see. I actually bought this movie before I saw it but it was a risk well worth taking. As much as Americans have done to cultivate the horror movie, before they began selling them out to excessive cg effects and big breasts, some others have made some seriously great entrants into this field.

We already know about the Japanese take on the supernatural, but this film, made and written by Neil Marshall, is one that slipped under the radar, as many of the best films do. He stated in an interview that it took six years to make and never had a theatrical release in the United States. When it was released as a DVD, it quickly gained a fan base as a cult favorite. Neil is also responsible for that wickedly cool horror chick flick, The Descent.

Pvt. Cooper has a problem. His goal is to join the elite Special forces team led by Cpt. Ryan, a sadistic s.o.b whose final test for Cooper, after running him ragged in the woods, is to have him shoot the dog who has helped the other soldiers track him down. Cooper, clearly a man with some sort of conscience, refuses and Ryan tells him he will never have what it takes to make a real soldier and returns him to his unit. Weeks later Cooper, his Sgt. Harry Wells along with the rest of the Squad are dropped into the wilderness as part of routine training exercise or so they think. Unknown to them, Ryan and his own forces are already in the woods using Cooper and his team as bait to lure out something much nastier.

Fortunately Ryan and his team get bitten first, and by dogs much bigger and fouler than they could have anticipated because as usually happens with the vain and egotistical they come ridiculously unprepared for their real target, a pack of werewolves.

When Cooper and his team find Ryan, he is the only man left in his elite team and despite Cooper’s dislike of the man they bandage him up and take him along as he tries to warn them that there is something out there they cannot handle. In fact, no sooner said than the beasties in the woods come a-calling and proceed to wipe out one of the team and rip out the Sgts’ intestines. Cooper, refusing to do what either Ryan or his own Sgt tells him, shoves the intestines back inside, providing just one of several funny gore shots, then proceeds to lead the squad through the forest as the werewolves slobber and howl behind them. They fortuitously run into Megan, a zoologist currently living in the glen researching the strange animals that inhabit it. She helps them escape in her Land Rover and they flee to the house of a local family that she knows.

Once there, a spot of tea is in order along with repairing the Sgt’s intestines with crazy glue. You gotta love the Brits. As Cooper and Megan shove and pack the intestines inside the whiskey swilling Sgt, Megan tries to tell Cooper what he and his team are really up against. At first all the men are skeptical, but as night falls and the proverbial wolves are at the door, they have no choice but to accept the truth of their situation.

The escalation of death and mayhem as they try to devise a way to get out alive has some great scenes of humor and even pathos as Cooper musters his ragtag bunch of men to combat some of the fiercest predators they’ve ever been up against. He is the best kind of leader, a natural born one and as the Sgt, certain of his impending doom, hands over the men to Cooper, he rises to the occasion with guts, grit and some true “balls of British Steel”.

The colors of the film are muted, mainly shot in the darkened woods with bare lighting and only brief forays into black and white when seeing through the werewolves eyes. This makes the overall feeling of this movie gritty and does not allow for any distancing from the gore by the audience. Camera shots are shaky at times and fast paced enough to take you through what the characters are going through. The writer has included some extremely funny scenes in the midst of intense gore and it only heightens the overall depth of the movie.

I did have some issues with the plot resolution and here is where the dialogue gets a bit weak as if they weren’t sure how to finish it off. However, the wrap up and final scene of mayhem is extremely satisfying and more than makes up for it.

Here is a film that reminds you, home is where the heart is, even if the heart is ripped out and lies bleeding on the floor.