Dog Soldiers review by The Grim Ringler

Dog Soldiers

Ok, I admit it, I am eating my hat, or crow, or werewolf. I was wrong. I and a friend watched about ten minutes of this modern re-working of werewolves and I wrote it off as terribly written, awfully acted, and just plain rotten. Well, my friend soldiered through the thing and insisted it got better. He insisted it was like Predator with werewolves. And without the dashing ex-governor Jesse Ventura. Sure, I said. But he was right. Sort of.

Dog Soldiers is a pretty simple movie really, which is a good thing. A brigade of Brit soldiers go off to the deep darks of the woods for some war games but get more than they bargained for when they get a distress signal and find that a special ops force has been slaughtered and their surviving commander is none to cooperative about what happened to his men. The soldiers find out in no time though as they are suddenly beset by ravenous werewolves that stalk them to a seemingly abandoned cottage where, with the help of a mysterious woman, they have to try to survive the night and fight off the werewolves or share the fate of everyone else that has come in the path of these monsters of legend.

And that’s about it. It’s a very simple, shallow plot but it fits what the filmmakers were obviously trying to do, which is to make a fun werewolf movie. And the acting is pretty bad, though they don’t get a lot to work with from the script, but they make a go of it, and are, if nothing else, energetic. The movie’s effects are a bit on the cheap but, well, it’s a no-budget horror movie and for that, it looks decent. If nothing else it’s passable and the effects aren’t so bad that they get in the way of the rest of the film. But this is not a bad movie at all. It’s an interesting re-imagining of the werewolf movie that takes a bit of ALIENS and a bit of PREDATOR and mixes them with NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and it all works pretty well. And when things ramp up at the end, they really ramp up and give you a climax and ending that really leave you with a feeling that you got your money’s worth.

As far as the movie, I saw a copy from the DVD but the picture looked decent and was at about 1.85:1. And while I am not sure what is all on the DVD I can say that it is definitely worth a rental. It is no BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF and is far from one of the classics of this sub-genre, but it’s made with an ocean of heart and energy and that makes up for most of the problems with the film. This is far from the classic that too many horror sites are proclaiming it but it is a good, fun movie that is well worth the price of a rental if nothing else.

…c…


7 out of 10 Jackasses

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