“You know what lives in the shadows now. You may never get another night’s sleep as long as you live.”
It seems like the werewolf movie is dead as a genre. Think about it: what was the last good one you saw? Wes Craven’s Cursed is absolute garbage, and Joe Johnston’s 2010 The Wolfman is as fine as you can expect from a journeyman director like Johnston (he replaced Mark Romanek, a much more interesting director). Ginger Snaps is a solid, gruesome parable about girls becoming women, and Ravenous…well, to be honest, I haven’t seen Ravenous. I’ll go out on a limb and say that Neil Marshall’s Dog Soldiers is the best werewolf movie of the twenty-first century, because it foregrounds the wolf part of the beast. This isn’t a movie that’s interested in using werewolves as a parable or allegory. No, this isn’t Alien we’re talking about; it’s Aliens.
Marshall is a peculiar director. His work is either terrific (The Descent, several great episodes of Game of Thrones) or just plain bad (Doomsday, 2019’s Hellboy) with very little in between. He seems to be most comfortable in genre trappings, and most successful when he can embrace and subvert them. Dog Soldiers exists in B-movie territory, which is what makes it successful; it’s equal parts Universal monster flick and Assault on Precinct 13.
The plot is pure, undiluted pulp: a detachment of Scottish soldiers are sent into the highlands for a war exercise, during which they will be pitted against the Special Forces. Instead they find something far deadlier and more terrifying than they imagined. Eventually they take refuge in a cottage house to make their final stand. It’s all very Roger Corman, and to the film’s credit, it doesn’t shy away from that. Marshall, who also wrote the script, takes this all very seriously, and in doing so is able to create genuine terror and havoc.
What all this means is that Dog Soldiers is one of my favorite types of horror movies: the siege movie. The werewolves are cunning foes, animalistic but with enough of their human minds intact that they can operate as an enemy squadron; they attack not only with ferocity but with strategy. The cast does a nice job of selling the desperation and hopelessness of the situation; there’s a nice subplot involving one soldier wishing he were at home watching England play Germany in soccer. He dies before he finds out who won.
The performances are all solid, for the most part. Kevin McKidd (Owen Hunt from Grey’s Anatomy) does a fine job as Cooper, thrust into the leadership role after Sgt. Wells (Sean Pertwee) is wounded by one of the wolves. He’s the first to accept what they’re dealing with, because nothing else makes sense, and the truth is staring right at them. Whether or not the creatures outside are actually werewolves is irrelevant to their survival. Liam Cunningham, sadly, fares worse as the human antagonist, Cpt. Ryan. Cunningham is a fine actor, one American audiences are most likely used to seeing as Davos Seaworth on Game of Thrones, where he is warm and paternal. Even with Cunningham’s considerable charisma and presence, the role of Ryan is underwritten, and amounts to a series of icy stares and pursed lips.
The wolves look good, if a bit dated. But that’s understandable, given that this movie is from 2002, and Marshall wanted to eschew CGI in favor of animatronics and prosthetics. Dog Soldiers is certainly better for this choice; just imagine how dated computer effects would look now. Marshall wisely cast dancers instead of stunt people as the wolves, and made the set too small for them to move around naturally. This gives them a strange style of movement, fluid but confined. Whatever you think of the look of the wolves, the movement of them is chilling.
Dog Soldiers probably isn’t that scary by today’s standards. It isn’t even the scariest movie we’ve watched this month (off the top of my head I’d say that’s probably The Changeling). But there is an undercurrent of dread running throughout, a fatalistic sense that no one is leaving this cottage alive because they’re up against a foe that they didn’t know existed until this day. Like Marshall’s best work, The Descent, Dog Soldiers is an exploration of what it means to come against the unknown, the unkillable, and what it takes to come out the other side.
Thursday, 10/1: Phantasm
Friday, 10/2: Frozen
Saturday, 10/3: Suspiria
Sunday, 10/4: Suspiria (2018)
Monday, 10/5: Emelie
Tuesday, 10/6: Castle Freak
Wednesday, 10/7: Session 9
Thursday, 10/8: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2
Friday, 10/9: We Are Still Here
Saturday, 10/10: The Changeling
Sunday, 10/11: The Bad Seed
Monday, 10/12: Verotika
Tuesday, 10/13: The Legend of Hell House
Wednesday, 10/14: Lake Mungo
Thursday, 10/15: Puppetmaster
Friday, 10/16: Marrowbone
Saturday, 10/17: A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master
Sunday, 10/18: Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers
Monday, 10/19: Sweetheart
Tuesday, 10/20: Girl On the Third Floor
Wednesday, 10/21: Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon
Thursday, 10/22: Triangle
Friday, 10/23: Dog Soldiers
Saturday, 10/24: Noroi: The Curse
Sunday, 10/25: Train to Busan
Monday, 10/26: Tales From the Hood
Tuesday, 10/27: Mandy
Wednesday, 10/28: Sometimes They Come Back
Thursday, 10/29: Veronica
Friday, 10/30: The Wicker Man
Saturday, 10/31: Child’s Play
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