Film Reviews

Dog Soldiers

• Rating:
• Director:
• Starring: Darren Morfitt
• Details: UK / 106 mins / (18).

A low budget but extremely ambitious werewolf horror, Dog Soldiers follows a squad of British soldiers on a training exercise in the Scottish Highlands. Happening across the remains of a top-secret unit, they discover only one survivor, Captain Ryan (Liam Cunningham). After encountering a wayward zoologist, Megan (Cleasby), who is looking for the perpetrators of the attack, the squadron is attacked by a pack of vicious beats and has to take cover in an abandoned farmhouse. Tongue-wedged-firmly-in-cheek, Dog Soldiers is hardly an original offering, but it's an extremely enjoyable one. First time writer/director Marshall isn't afraid to wear his influences on his sleeve (An American Werewolf in London, Assault on Precinct 13), but for the most part, he doesn't attempt to nick ideas wholesale from those he obviously respects. Instead, he wisely uses these influences and his own innovation to construct an old-fashioned but enjoyable genre movie, which never lets its budget limit its ambitions. Characterisation isn't exactly at a premium and things get a little too gory and silly at times, but ultimately Dog Soldiers is perfect brain dead action thriller.

Review by Garreth Murphy