Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13313 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-12-16
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 105 minutes

Amazon.com
This lean, efficient horror flick stands well above most bloated blockbusters. Dog Soldiers follows a military squad on a training mission in the Scottish wilds, where they run into a pack of werewolves. There's nothing fancy about the plot--the soldiers hole up in a farmhouse and desperately try to fend off the werewolves until dawn--but the script is full of smart dialogue and clever ideas, the direction is dynamic, and the performances (from Kevin McKidd, Sean Pertwee, Emma Cleasby, and Liam Cunningham, among a solid cast of relative unknowns) are strong and committed throughout. Dog Soldiers pays homage to Night of the Living Dead, Aliens, and The Evil Dead, among other films, but the references are woven into the fabric of the movie. An unpretentious, tension-inducing flick like this is a pleasant reminder that even crude special effects can be more evocative than expensive computer flashiness. --Bret Fetzer

Customer Reviews

Soldiers versus the supernatural
Dog Soldiers is a good action flick with the supernatural-horror slant. I have used clips of this film several times to demonstrate different leadership styles of the military. What I liked about this military/horror show was that the military action scenes were very accurate and believable. O.K. so the werewolf slant had a few flaws. But, the film was non-stop kick-butt, right to the end.

Doug Setter
Author of Stomach Flattening and One Less Victim

It's okay.
Really? You've looked at the cover and read the title of the movie, and you're still not clear? It's soldiers and werewolves and a ton of awesomeness.

Just buy it already.

If you go down to the woods today...
Quite possibility the best werewolf film made since An American Werewolf in London.

In Dog Soldiers, a group of British squaddies, out on a training exercise in the vast wilderness of the Scottish Highlands, come up against a `troop' of werewolves.

Having dispatched a group of superior British SAS special forces, surely the regular British troops won't be much of a problem for the 7ft hairy howlers. Wrong; through their toughness, training and the little incentive of staying alive, the squaddies put a brave determined fight, fuelled with typical gallows humour (`I hope I give you the sh***' says one of the squaddies before he becomes `dinner').

Whilst it takes bits from Aliens and Night of the Living Dead, you have to remember that these films in turn take inspiration from earlier films, Aliens, for example, is a sort of futuristic `Zulu' and the siege of Rourke's Drift in Natal. There is also the look up to Predator, though instead of muscle bound men we have a sort of mismatch of determined, dogged, (`scuse the pun) and well trained group of terriers (oh dear), the sort of blokes that make up the British Army (or 'the scum of the earth' as Wellington famously called his own troops)..

This is a unique modern horror movie, in that it throws out the CGI possibilities. CGI never ever works in horror movies. The digital animation, no matter how realistic, severs the link between the viewers' expectations that the `monster' and the `victim' share the same `stage' (ground, etc). Whilst CGI brings wonders to fantasy films, such as Lord of the Rings and Jurassic Park, it seems too false and detached to exactly what is going on, on the screen. And that is what is great about Dog Soldiers, the wolves are on screen and you never have the irritated inkling that the victims are not staring death in the face, but are merely looking into a blue screen. American Werewolf in Paris, in particular, suffers greatly from this problem (among other things as well, to be fair).

The cast includes fairly unknowns; however Kevin McKidd is most famous for his role in Trainspotting and Rome. Sean Pertwee has been in a few movies, including Event Horizon and coincidentally played Caesar in a series about Roman Emperors around the time McKidd was in Rome. Both Roman series where made and shown by the BBC (and HBO).

I guess you will have to watch it to found out who lives and who doesn't, but I assure you it is worth it. It wasn't a huge success, but I believe it has enjoyed a second wave of success through word of mouth and has got itself a small cult following. There is a belated sequel planned, which is rumoured to be a bigger budget film than this one and aimed more at the US market. If so, then this film may get searched out again by a new wave of curious horror film addicts.

Dog Soldiers is a perfect film for a night in while the rain crashes down outside and howls pierce the cold night air! And, it all ends with a poke at the English tabloids, and a shock victory against the `old enemy' (Germany) in a little game of football being played hundreds of miles away from the horror of the Scottish wilderness.

4 Stars.