Dog Soldiers is a gory, flawed, and comic horror film. The jumble of genres and emotions the audience thereby feel are oddly placed. The plot follows the story of a squad of British soldiers led by Sgt Harry Wells (Sean Pertwee) on a standard training exercise in the Scottish Highlands. Their objective is to evade capture by the enemy and escape to safety.
This relatively simple task becomes muddied when the soldiers see a flare going off. They immediately travel to find the source of this signal and discover the remnants of a Special Ops team and their captain (Liam Cunningham) who is the sole survivor of an unidentified enemy attack. The soldiers patch up the wounded captain and discover that they have lost radio contact with their headquarters. As such, an evacuation is impossible. They move off and come under attack from ‘something’ that remains unclear. Eventually they manage to hole up in an apparently abandoned farmhouse and the horror and suspense build up from here on in with the introduction of the enemy; werewolves.
The plot then progresses with the simple steps that make a horror movie work. The old farmhouse setting, the dark of night, the candle lit rooms, everything is there. There is also some nice plot development in regards to the Special Ops Captain but nothing groundbreaking.
Dog Soldier's Characters Two-Dimensional
The characters are introduced well through their aptitude as soldiers and some camp fire conversations and although attempts have been made to humanise them, the discourse regarding the football game they are missing, England versus Germany, they come across as two dimensional. It is a problematic area of this film as the audience is not really affected by their deaths or worried for them. However it is a horror film and as such the real fear that the audience feels is when they place themselves in the shoes of the characters. This is easily done as the sets and props are brilliantly put together with the only problem being that they appear slightly dated. The scripting is very weak at times but the football references, ‘They think it’s all over...’ work well in garnering a few laughs.
Neil Marshall, who directed and wrote Dog Soldiers deserves an acknowledgment on some very funny but not incredibly intelligent scripting. An example being the scene when one of the soldiers is caught by a werewolf. The soldier looks the werewolf straight in the face and says, ‘I hope I give you the shits you ****ing wimp.’ A good moment in the movie and the humour does work well due in comparison to the adverse situation. This is also a very telling scene of the whole, slightly trashy, execution of the movie.
Guns and Werewolves and Not Much More
Watch this film for some easy entertainment. It has soldiers, guns, werewolves and crass dialogue. It is fairly well shot and edited and there really are no complaints to be had on that front.
A solid and amusing little film but one limited for imagination; a definite rental for those nights in but not really a keeper.
