February 25, 2003

Dog Soldiers

My friend Claxy summed up Dog Soldiers quite neatly: (Night of the Living Dead - zombies) + (Aliens - aliens) + werewolves + self-awareness. Still, that doesn't mean it's a bad bad thing. Being neither as uncomfortably smart and unexpected as Night of the Living Dead nor as slick and white-knuckled as Aliens is not a damning flaw; Aliens was one of the best action movies of the Eighties, and Night of the Living Dead is one of the great horror movies of all time. Dog Soldiers is a movie about a small British Army unit conducting a field exercise in rural Scotland. I hope no readers will be shocked to discover that things go horribly, horribly awry when the werewolves turn up. Once the soliders hole up, along with a mysterious and taciturn Special Forces operative and the obligatory beautiful local, Dog Soldiers succeeds by keeping things moving. The key to great horror movies is a growing sense of either claustrophobia or the unheimlich, but Dog Soldiers is really a horror film more in the late Carpenter vein, which is to say an action film, quips and all. That's not a flaw, however: the characters are largely charming and believable, the plot suffers from no gaping holes until the very end, and the special effects are quite impressive for what must have been a limited budget. If a movie willing to sacrifice what mimesis it can get from a story about werewolves squaring off with the British Army for a cheap pun sounds appealing and the idea of a self-conscious horror movie hasn't been spoiled by Scream knockoffs, then Dog Soldiers is worth a rental. Plus, V. claimed that a number of the soldier boys were cute, and the obligatory beautiful local was awfully easy on the eyes.

posted at 10:56 PM | 1 comments

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