31 Days of Horror – October 7th – “Dog Soldiers”

“Dog Soldiers” puts itself ahead of the pack right off the bat by coming up with a realistic reason for a bunch of people to be stranded in a dire situation. There’s a challenge in coming up with a premise that isolates the characters in some kind of horror hell. So many movies half-ass the set-up that they immediately fall flat.

Hair today, gone tomorrow.

A group of British soldiers embark on a training mission in the Scottish wilderness… and find they’ve bitten off more than they can chew when they discover most of a Special Ops group torn to pieces at a nearby camp. It’s 50 miles to the nearest town, and night is falling quickly.

Lots of good old fashion gore, not to mention a decent, comptent story (another horror rarity), follows. There’s an action scene towards the middle of the movie that comes off like a bunch of boys playing War, perhaps not helped by the incredibly fake sounding gunfire. But for the most part, the performances are solid. The dialogue is relaxed. A lot of (bad) horror movies are a little too aware of the fact that they’re horror movies, and the exchanges are forced and stiff.

The monsters reminded me more of the Egyptian god Anubis than your standard werewolves, which wouldn’t necessarily be bad, except they just look a little silly. Considering the budget, I have to cut the movie some slack. However, what a lot of movies don’t understand is that the unknown is scarier than the known, so not showing too much of the monster works to their advantage. This is especially true when the special effects are subpar. So even though I’ll forgive “Dog Soldiers” for the low budget effects, I think it would have been scarier had they not shown quite so much of the big dog heads.

Just to give you an idea of how low budget we’re talking, the movie was originally shot on 16mm and blow up to 35mm. For such a low budget affair, it’s a damn good movie, and no surprise that writer/director Neil Marshall went on to make “The Descent“, which is probably my favorite horror movie.

Related posts:

1. 31 Days of Horror – October 11th – “Doomsday”
2. 31 Days of Horror – October 3rd – “The Hills Run Red”
3. 31 Days of Horror – October 5th – “The Uninvited”
4. 31 Days of Horror – October 1st – “The Thaw”
5. 31 Days of Horror – October 2nd – “Wolf Creek”