Dog Soldiers (2002) Movie Review
Written By: XX
Edited By: Grave Reviews Staff
Film Information
Director: Neil Marshall
Writers: Neil Marshall
Producer(s): Christopher Figg, Tom Reeve, David E. Allen
Date Released: May 10, 2002
Cast:
Sean Pertwee – Sergeant Harry G. Wells
Kevin McKidd – Private Lawrence Cooper
Emma Cleasby – Megan
Liam Cunningham – Captain Richard Ryan
Darren Morfitt – Private Phil “Spoon” Witherspoon
Chris Robson – Private Joe Kirkley
Leslie Simpson – Private Terry Milburn
Thomas Lockyer – Corporal Bruce Campbell
Rating = 2/5 Graves
***May contain spoilers***
Synopsis
Cooper (Kevin McKidd), a skilled military man, fails to make it into a special forces team after refusing the order of his superior to kill a dog. Four weeks later, he joins a ragtag team and their sergeant on a routine military training out in the woods. Their night goes awry when they found the bodies of another military team, and the injured Captain Ryan (Liam Cunningham) the only remaining survivor of an attack. As they try to escape the woods, they lost one of their men and the sergeant was wounded. Megan (Emma Cleasby), a zoologist, happens upon them and leads them to a farmhouse to regroup. Upon arrival, they fight to protect themselves while trying to discover the real nature of their werewolf enemies.
Gore Factor
Expect a lot of gore in this movie. It starts with two campers being attacked bloodily. As the team tries to escape the woods, a soldier is impaled in tree branch and ripped to shreds by a werewolf. The sergeant is struck, and his blood spill and guts are overtly shown. Following their arrival in the farmhouse, blood spatters are aplenty as they try to thwart the werewolves. In the barn, we see a werewolf, severing a soldier’s neck and throwing the detached head. The film also does not shy away from showing the werewolves devouring the guts and organs of the fallen soldiers. They also show a decaying corpse and a bloodstained sword being thrusted in a soldier’s mouth. This movie delivers on the gore aspect.
The Grave Review
Dog Soldiers (2002) is an unapologetically cheeky and self-assured film. It doesn’t try to be what it’s not because it knows what it wants to be and conveys it successfully. Despite obviously not having the best special effects budget, the film does not shy away from showing the bloodbath and the massacre of the werewolf attacks. The plot is simplicity at its best and harkens back to the beloved fairytales of our childhood. Furthermore, the cinematography intimately draws the viewer in, making you feel part of the group, and subsequently, arousing the same dread and fright from the audience.
The film is also humorous at its core. The soldiers are a group of brash individuals who never lost their morale and humor as they face off against the ferocious and bloodthirsty creatures. They are soldiers through and through who will fight to the death-defying end. The witty and remarkable one-liners they drop in the face of terror keeps you amused all throughout the film. Even though the film is bloody, the slaughter and bloodshed are also depicted in a comical manner.
It may not be the most highly budgeted film with the best CGI and special effects out there, but the viewer could still appreciate this low budget movie that has a lot of heart and guts (literally and figuratively).
For the above reasons, Grave Reviews gives Dog Soldiers (2002) two graves out of five graves.
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