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Dog SoldiersAfter flunking the selection process for SAS-alike Specials Operations Division, Private Cooper (McKidd) returns to his platoon. While on exercises in the Scots highlands, Cooper, Sarg Harry (Pertwee) and the Geordie grunts joke and tell tales, partly to distract themselves from the fact they're missing a key football match but also to keep the spookiness of the barren woodlands at bay. It doesn't work - a horribly mauled cow carcass tumbles into their midst, then the next day the platoon finds the bloody remnants of a Special Ops camp. Aloof captain Ryan (Cunningham) is the only survivor, but he's sporting horrible claw-marks and muttering "There was only supposed to be one". One what? Well, the howling gives it away.
Fleeing, the soldiers are picked up by zoologist Megan (Cleasby) and make it to a farmhouse, but they're a man down and Sarg's guts are hanging out. Coop takes charge, while the werewolves gather.
Of course it's a hoary plot to have a group holed up and besieged. It's not only a favoured set-up for war movies (the predicament is likened to Zulu's Rourke's Drift in the film), westerns (Rio Bravo), urban thrillers (Carpenter's re-casting of the Hawks' western, Assault On Precinct 13), sci fi (Aliens, one distinct point of reference for this film) and, of course, horror. The Night Of The Living Dead is an another obvious comparison here. But whereas Romero's zombies could be felled with a well-placed shot, the werewolves of Dog Soldiers just keep on coming.
Newcastle-born writer-director Neil Marshall handles the set-up well, especially considering the obviously low budget. Clich?© rears up readily, especially when the characters start yelling at each other in the less focused final act, but otherwise there's some inventive material (the prologue features a camper's worst nightmare) among the derivative devices and good use is made of the wooded, craggy locations' sense of creepiness and isolation.
The director keeps the exposure of the beast to a minimum. We're left in no doubt thanks to shadowy forms in the woods, but the werewolves - seven foot tall bipeds, all sinew and huge jaws - are only really revealed during the denouement. Which is as it should be in a monster movie. No explicit transformations here - it's all about desperate humans trying to fend off savage predators.
McKidd makes for a good leading man too. He's a versatile actor, having moved from playing troubled urban Scot in Trainspotting and Small Faces to prim Victorian in Topsy Turvy. Now he can add action hero to his CV.
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