Buckets of horror films, whether they’re out of your boutique video stores’s B-movie bin or A-grade “staff picks,” strand a group of cowering people in a house in the woods, trying to survive the night as they face off against unspeakable monsters.
The trick with Dog Soldiers is that, this time, the cornered people inside are just as ferocious as the monsters outside
A British action horror film from 2002, the movie is so throwback that you could have seen it in the 1980s or earlier.
And that’s a good thing.
The low-budget scarefest is, at times, darkly funny. And it’s chock-full of practical effects, old-school gore, and a classic, confined structure reminiscent of horror films past.
The film made a decent splash over in England and has endured as a cult classic internationally to this day.
Despite Dog Soldiers’ modest budget of £5 million, the film consistently appears on lists of the best modern werewolf films.
But the funny part? The werewolves are more happenstance than top feature of the creature feature. Director Neil Marshall wanted to ditch the classic sadness and curse that comes with being a werewolf. So Marshall swerved that melodramatic, oh-woe-is-me every full moon turnpike.
The conflict here is simple: a group of highly-trained soldiers takes on an enemy that just happens to be a pack of bloodthirsty werewolves ready to devour them.
Dog Soldiers was on a limited budget, shooting in Luxembourg for the help of a generous tax deal. Its filming schedule was beset by falling snow. And the movie took six years to rewrite and get financing for (starting in 1996).
So with all the trials of filmmaking, it’s no doubt director Neil Marshall worked his ass off to put this movie in the public eye.
But let’s hold that praise train up on its sentimental tracks. We can’t let the noisy plaudits and production toil sway us into just handing out accolades without an examination.
So is Dog Soldiers a good movie?
Let’s find out.
The Plot of Dog Soldiers:
Sergeant Harry G. Wells (Sean Pertwee) and his men, including Private Cooper (Kevin McKidd) and Private Phil “Spoon” Witherspoon (Darren Morfitt), drop out of a helicopter somewhere in the remote Scottish Highlands.
With guns full of blanks, they’re on a training exercise against a Special Air Service unit.
Or at least they were.
Soon, they find that elite unit in shredded pieces, like someone’s prepped it for sale as canned human.
And the only survivor, Captain Richard Ryan (Liam Cunningham), won’t spit out just what the hell attacked them.
Soon, as Sergeant Wells and his men arm themselves with live ammunition, there is movement in the trees.
The squad escapes the terror thanks to the help of local zoologist Megan (Emma Cleasby). But when they reach a small home in the woods, it turns out their foes seem to have picked up the trail and tracked them there.
And when it’s revealed their enemies are full-blown werewolves, the squad settles in for a fight, believing dawn’s light will save them.
Can Sergeant Wells, Private Cooper, and the rest of the men, as well as Megan, survive the night?
The Rest of the Main Cast Includes:
- Chris Robson as Private Joe Kirkley
- Leslie Simpson as Private Terry Milburn
- Thomas Lockyer as Corporal Bruce Campbell
- Craig Conway as Male Camper
- Tina Landini as Female Camper
What’s Working Well Here:
No Throwaway Fodder, +3 Points
As a writer/director of a horror film, you can’t get too attached to your characters. Your pen is a guillotine. Your typing keys, bullets.
Because you know, with the genre you’re in, you will have to slay some of your darling creations.
But writer/director Neil Marshall didn’t treat his squad like fodder.
According to an article on Film School Rejects, “Marshall aimed for authenticity with his “squaddies” in part because his father and grandfather were both in the military. He says most of that comes through in the gallows humor they display.”
It can be hard to stand out when you have military guys because there have been oh so many media about them and plenty of it iconic stuff that’s been burned into audiences’ minds.
But Dog Soldiers doesn’t overthink it and gets things right, focusing on giving everyone just one little trait you can identify with.
There’s Spoon, who is quick-footed and the beloved joker of the group.
Joe, the group’s heavy, just wants to watch football, also known as soccer.
Terry is the token cocky one.
And the no-nonsense Private Cooper “doesn’t scare easily.”
I also liked that, despite the sight of nasty deaths at hand, these trained men rarely melted down. Soldiers who meet their end face it with a, well, come on then. Let’s have it – battling to the last breath.
Despite the simplistic soldiers vs. werewolves premise driving the film, the characters power the movie.
At the Wolve’s Table, +5 Points
Despite a release in the early 2000s, Marshall and crew opted for practical effects over CGI, believing computer effects were already overused and would pull viewers out of the movie. Audiences might spend their time evaluating the quality of the special effects instead of getting stuck into the plot.
And credit to Neil Marshall because he made that decision before The Mummy Returns, the poster child of high-profile CGI failure, was even out.
Still, it’s a bold choice. Horror fans love a creature design; so the werewolf effects were going to make or break the film.
And the effects team nailed it. The wolves are slinky nightmares with dog heads. They’re like blood-gulping hounds of satan, not the conniving little wolf kind that tries to impersonate your grandma and trick you into a little bite on the wrist.
The special effects team went with a complete transformation – no trace of human with wolf-like features, just actual bipedal wolves with bloodied snouts and sharp claws. The hair on the head, not the body, divides opinion in some online forums, but for me, it’s a kickass twist.
Animatronics were used inside the suits, and to give the wolves graceful movements, dancers were hired to play them. And the performers wore stilts inside the costumes, adding an all-important extra bit of height.
To make the wolves extra imposing, the sets were designed so that they would have to duck under things to get around the house, further emphasizing the towering menaces they are.
But it’s not just your costumes that make your monsters scary – it’s how you use them.
In films with weak costume design, the cinematography and editing has to work hard so that the audience can’t clearly see how crap the outfits are and risk breaking the illusion.
Or the suits are brittle and can’t allow any realistic combat, forcing the kills off-screen and watering down the movie with a lot of camera tricks and edits.
Dog Soldiers deploys the wolves like a pack of fighters. And this is great because, when the wolves do up-close-and-personal fighting with our soldiers, we take in the whole, terrifying image of the monsters.
You can see the craftsmanship of the werewolves, even in the light of day, in behind-the-scenes production photos.
Action and Scares, +3 Points
Repelling bloodthirsty wolves is a tough night’s work. The film mixes it up with firefights and eventually breaks down into the soldiers pelting back the literal wolves at the door with whatever is at their disposal – swords and axes lying about the house or boiling pots of water from the kitchen stove.
You won’t be bored here: The pacing is solidly forward, and the mix of standing your ground or fleeing for your life shakes things up.
The story doles out exposition along the way so that we don’t get stuck all in explaining mode and then having to shift to all-action mode. This way, you don’t always know what’s coming.
It’s a noisy, lively night in the middle of Scottish nowhere.
What’s Not Working So Well:
Don’t Bark at the Moon, -1 Point
**Spoiler Alert Here**
These werewolves must be related to Wolverine because they have regeneration powers.
Even though our soldiers repeatedly pump pounds of bullets into the werewolves via shotgun or submachine gun or slice off their hands with swords from time to time, the same wolves keep wiping their paws across their angry, bloodied snouts and returning for the kill.
While you could argue this ups the stakes for our heroes, making their task of surviving ever harder, I didn’t like the regen choice.
When you face an enemy you can’t physically kill, such as in John Carpenter’s Ghosts of Mars, it starts to take the fun out of watching your heroes fight them. You know they can’t win, and that lets a little dramatic tension leak like a tidy fart.
But, hey, maybe I’m looking at this the wrong way. Since the unkillable werewolves are from the Scottish Highlands….maybe they are Highlander werewolves!? Hey, hey! Now that would be a connection I could get behind.
Silly Reference, -1 Point
Okay, call me a nitpicker now. This movie references numerous other works, including The Evil Dead, Zulu, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and others.
That’s all well and good. But there’s a point in the film that references a line from The Matrix, and it was terrible. Right in the middle of some harrowing sequences, the characters just blurt out a well-known line from that film as comic relief.
It’s great to remind audiences they’re in a movie when it’s Spaceballs. I know the film aimed for some dark comedy, but here I just don’t like being pulled out of the action or horror like that.
But, hey, this is just a few seconds of screen time.
Wait, What? – 2 Points
**Spoiler Alerts Here**
I’m not lying when I put up that spoiler alert banner because this will ruin something pretty big in the plot.
Still reading? Okay.
So there are a few unexpected surprises in the movie as it unfolds, and one of them is that Meg is a werewolf too.
Wait. What?
Meg magically came along at the right moment and picked the soldiers up in the truck from out of the woods to help them escape.
She helped pull Spoon up a rope or used a camera to stun the werewolves in fights.
Then she just decides, well, I told you to blow up the barn when they aren’t there, and now I opened the door for them?
This didn’t make sense to me at all. Meg has plenty of moments alone with the soldiers, whose guards are down, and she could have killed one or two, had she wanted.
I looked my confusion about Meg’s intent up online. The idea is that Meg was laying a trap for the soldiers the whole time, and there are visual cues I must have missed hinting at her deception as the movie unfolds.
But how does this work? Because she’s been stunning her family’s eyes with that camera and helping the soldiers plug them with bullets all night.
At the least, you think Meg’s mom, dad, and siblings are going to have some words with her about all the pain she gave them when it comes time to sit down for the next wolf family dinner – “Can you pass the potatoes, Meg? I’d get them, but my hand hasn’t quite regenerated from being cut off by the soldiers you helped slap around the family.”
So you’re going to have to go along with the idea that Meg enjoys this sort of thing and that she took joy in all this, or that she just doesn’t like her family that much, but then decided, well, blood is blood. I’d better let my family in to spill a whole bunch of the red stuff after all.
Lastly, the continuity is lost for me in that Meg was not transformed when the rest of her family was.
According to IMDb, “Neil Marshall says the werewolves merely feel compelled to change on the night of the full moon and can hold it back if they wish. This retroactively makes the family even more evil – since they apparently change willingly.”
But that, too, makes me wonder why the Sarge and Ryan are forced to transform when Meg was not? It seems to undermine a funny dialogue between the Sarge and Cooper with an analogy about how maybe transforming is like taking a crap — you can sometimes pinch it off and perhaps not have to go right away.
Maybe the Sarge and Ryan are just noobs at this whole werewolf thing and true vets can keep it back. They didn’t have a chance to read the tantric guide to not blowing your werewolf transformation wad yet. I don’t know.
Overthinking movies is an audience crime. It’s as bad as trying to figure out how the magician you paid to see is pulling off their tricks instead of just enjoying the show.
But while Meg’s deception is intended, I don’t think it makes sense. And her holding back the transformation seems in conflict with characters who got turned.
The Conventions, -1 Point
This is a low-budget movie, and people trapped in a house with a monster outside only have so many logical options.
But there were moments in the film where I felt I could know about what would happen next simply because you’ve seen movies like Night of the Living Dead or Assault on Precinct 13 before — this is the part of the film where they’ll attempt an escape; this is the moment when something will escalate, etc.
But, hey, it’s a low-budget movie. Marshall, cast, and crew did a good job painting themselves into a place with clear stakes and didn’t have to force tons of locations.
Once again, it’s somewhat heavy to criticize the limited-budget movie for doing limited-budget horror movie things. I craved a little more invention with the soldiers’ wits and options. Still, this predictability may not be a problem for all audiences, especially genre fans.
Should I Watch Dog Soldiers?
Total Score: 6 Points
Dog Soldiers is a gory little action-horror film that strikes a balance between those genres.
I didn’t like all of its smaller lore choices and little plot turns, but it wins thanks to its characters, smashing creature designs, and well-executed fight-and-kill sequences.
It’s a werewolf film nothing like the monsters’ usual tales – the wolves enjoy being wolves, and whatever is around them has unwittingly come in for dinner, not a riddle or a tale of cursed woe.
So if you like a little bit of a scare, a lot of action, and can handle some gory scenes, this is for you.
The Legacy of Dog Soldiers:
So what is the legacy of Dog Soldiers?
Well, as we discussed, the movie has developed that so-called cult following. It’s said online that the film had strong viewership through DVDs and late-night cable.
Funny enough, when I watched the movie, I thought to myself, well, I don’t believe this is my favorite movie of all time. Still, it is a lot better than what I used to tune into on the Sci-Fi Channel.
Yet in America, it actually DID debut on the Sci-Fi Channel. At least it was before that channel’s rebrand from “Sci-Fi Channel” to “Syfy.” Not to just digress completely, but what was that attempt for? Were they trying to be cool or something? Really don’t get it.
Despite never having a broad theatrical run in America or any notable release, the film has been made available through outlets like Shout! Factory, which has a special collector’s edition available. And they’ve even upgraded that sucker to 4k; so you know people care about this film.
And I think, because the movie was shot on 16mm, you’re going to have to deal with some serious graininess at times. Maybe they got that out somehow on those releases. I’m not technical enough to know that, nor have I seen them.
Some consider this movie a significant success story in British independent genre cinema. It’s right there in the early 2000s, along with 28 Days Later. You could view it as part of the resurgence of the British horror movie scene of that era.
And thanks to those practical effects, the movie has really aged well, since you don’t have to look at it now and see a massive decline in the quality of its could-be CGI.
There are many Reddit threads debating the werewolf designs. Some fans actually don’t like it, but many put it in their all-time pantheon for the classic beasts. I think it belongs.
My personal favorite werewolf is the one from the Arcade/Sega Genesis Game Altered Beast, but that’s just because it came out of Altered Beast more than anything. “Power Up!” if you know the reference.
And some audiences have appreciated the way the werewolves are portrayed as tall, fast, and out to kill, rather than campy and sympathetic, as in past iterations. So that no-melodrama approach has had an influence on werewolf movies.
Some fun facts: Jason Statham was going to play Private Cooper, but he ended up going to work with John Carpenter on Ghosts of Mars instead. That’s a little weird because that’s the second time I’ve mentioned that movie in this article.
Simon Pegg was offered to play Spoon, but he had promised Edgar Wright he’d do Shaun of the Dead instead.
I like the cast of this movie, and the film is popular as a cult favorite. But it may have more widespread attention nowadays if those two actors had been in it.
There have been many talks and attempts at sequels.
I don’t think the details are that interesting. The short of it is that a film called Dog Soldiers: Fresh Meat was in or out of production from 2004 until announcements of release dates in 2014. But no sequel has ever happened.
Neil Marshal has often been asked about sequels, and he had actually planned them.
According to IMDb, he’s said in the audio commentary on Dog Soldiers that, when Meg cuts her hand on a shard of glass, he was using that moment to set up a sequel about werewolf DNA to help complete a planned trilogy.
That’s interesting because, when I watched the film, I thought the movie lingered on that moment a bit. If you’ve seen it and felt the same, now you know why.
IMDb also says there was a never-produced sequel about Cooper ending up in a mental institution. But when he gets there, somehow the camper from the beginning of Dog Soldiers is still alive, yet turns out to be a werewolf. He turns inmates, doctors, and nurses into werewolves, and Cooper and the other living people in the facility would have to fight them off.
That sequel doesn’t make any sense to me and sounds ludicrous.
**SPOILER ALERT HERE** – Plus, if you make that sequel, then how does the silver letter-opener that comes in handy at the end of Dog Soldiers get to the house if that camper didn’t die at the hands of the wolves? You’d be possibly ruining the continuity of your first movie with that camper alive, but maybe I’m missing something.
Anyhow, Marshall has maintained that any sequel probably won’t happen.
Dog Soldiers appears to have kick-started Neil Marshall’s career. He would go on to direct lots of movies, including The Descent (2005), Doomsday (2008), Centurion (2010), Hellboy (2019), and The Lair (2022). He has also directed some battle-heavy Game of Thrones episodes, such as Season 2’s Blackwater and Season 4’s The Watchers on the Wall. He’s also done some other television work.
The Game of Thrones connections don’t end there. Liam Cunningham, who played Ryan, was Davos Seaworth on the show. That’s probably his best-known role, but he has appeared in tons of things. He’s been nominated for the London Film Critics’ Circle Award, British Independent Film Award, won two Irish Film & Television Awards, and shared a BAFTA with Michael Fassbender.
Kevin McKidd, who played Private Cooper, is best known for playing Dr. Owen Hunt in Grey’s Anatomy and Tommy Mackenzie in Trainspotting.
But McKidd is more well-known to me for playing Lucius Vorenus in HBO’s Rome series. It’s really too bad that show ran out of funding or whatever happened to it, because it was a fantastic combination of actual history and pumping up the drama on HBO steroids.
Sean Pertwee played Sergeant Wells, and he’s still going strong. You might recognize him from Event Horizon. He’s been in movies like Equilibrium, Doomsday, or Soldier with Kurt Russel, if you know that one. He’s actually the son of Jon Pertwee, who was the Third Doctor in Doctor Who.
Apologies to any actors I didn’t highlight.
And one last bit of cool facts – according to IMDb, “The movie probably takes place on the 1 and 2 September 2001, as England did indeed beat Germany 5 – 1 on the night of the 1st. Those nights were indeed full moons.”
Well, that’s all I have. Thank you so much for reading.
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Disclaimer:
This review’s factual information was gathered through online sources, like Wikipedia, IMDB, or interviews. Misrepresentations and errors are possible but unintentional.
Making art is hard. This is a fan’s blog. Any criticisms are meant to be constructive.
