Dog Soldiers Review
Written by: terrorwatch
Dog Soldiers has been around for a while and every now and again i know for a fact that somebody will tell me to watch it. So after purchasing it around 6 months ago and never getting around to watch it, I finally did. Ninety or so minuets later I thought, oh cool werewolves!
Dog Soldiers was directed by Neil Marshall and brought to our cinemas in 2002. The movie is tells us the story of a routine military exercise turns into a nightmare in the Scotland wilderness. Nightmare meaning the army of werewolves coming after them in every second of the movie. Pretty bad though if your there lunch, pretty soon there held up in a old cottage in the middle of nowhere were the truth of the werewolves comes out inside the cottage walls. Simple storyline but made in Scotland, damn this has got to be a lame movie.
No way, damn when i saw the movie i knew what all the people i passed were ranting on about. The movie is a very cool movie, mainly because the cast really did a good job of piecing the movie together with raw emotion and close kept acting.
The story brings to us a group of close friends/ military group who think they are on training but soon realise that higher powers only put them their for dinner. However these soldiers just look the part and you can really tell the director has really kept the movie factual with all the solider movements and procedures they were doing. This wasn't some big blockbuster movie where the cops jump from helicopters and totally fail to look real, these guys did look the business. The friendships in the movie really shown through and you ended up caring about these guys, even the Corporal was lovable and not a bastard in this movie. Along with allot of male love came shouting and screaming and plenty of action on screen to make me happy enough to sit back with a beer and be entertained. Its fair to say watching this was just right for the soul, not hyped just a closer look at real life cinema.
There is very little CGI used in the movie because the people involved in the filming believed that CGI was being over-used at the time and that it would take viewers out of the movie because they would be focused on how the special effects looked rather than the story, thus the werewolves are animations and body suits with Stilts. On the subject on these gigantic creatures, they looked so cool and with so much blood round there jaws they just looks so menacing. However this didn't stop the werewolves looking a tad weird, they ended up looking like aliens due to their great hight in size and really looked out of place walking around a cottage surrounded by trees. Not to worry for what we seen the blood and gore was on screen as much as the strange werewolves and made the movie Great.
The main thing that looked excellent in this movie is the camera work, the whole movie is far from a decent quality. Watching it reminded me of watching home movies with the family, it was really bad. But really this movie worked well with the bad visuals, i don't know but it just reminded me of the early horror movies i love dearly. After that it didn't really seem a problem and although set in a dark cold wood the cottage just seemed so warm but again absolutely terrifying. We also see intestines and insides of human bodies, up close with them and you think, why they using plastic dog sausages for this movie and a little walk and away and i thought great insides!
Audio was neither here or there is this movie, just the same old boring shots and cracks that was usually hear. In fact if they did a bit more with the audio we might of had a bit more of a fright on the scenes that mattered. Its strange how a little boost of creative audio can enhance scenes 100% more. So what i thought of this movie. OK Dog Soldiers does what it sets out to do, be a good horror movie, not the best but good. It failed to scare me at all, i mean i haven't really seen a werewolve movie that has actually scared me and id challenge any movie to do it. Some scenes are a bit jumping but the rest isn't nothing, i did enjoy the humor between the soldiers and the twists of the story you get at the ending. For sure this movie is a really cool movie but it don't have that jagged edge that cuts you like a knife in the dark, still that isn't to say that a knife cutting you in the dark is a good thing? Check out the British achievement, and as British movie standards go this has to be one of its best, still, theres not many British movies that actually make OK...