5.23.2008

LKMYNTS... Dog Soldiers.

I haven’t done a Little Known Movies You Need To See (or, as the acronym seems to spell, 'lick my nuts') since January, but I felt this could be one, though not in the same way as the others. Dog Soldiers was made by the same guy who did The Descent and Doomsday. However, unlike The Descent, I actually enjoyed this one, much in the same was as Doomsday ('oddly entertaining'). Dog Soldiers is about a group of soldiers sent off to training in the middle of the Scotland Highlands who stumble upon a pack of werewolves. They meet up with a young woman who takes them to a house nearby, and they have to try and last it out until morning.

I’m not saying this movie is brilliant. In fact, I only recommend it if you’re a fan of B-Horror movies (or werewolves, though that’s usually the same territory). It’s been compared a lot to movies such as Jaws, Alien(s), or Predator. Personally, I think that while it may have one or two similarities with those (at a sort of stretch), I think it has a lot more in common with Night of the Living Dead, but with werewolves instead of zombies. I’d go into specifics, but I might spoil the movie.

But the movie is more horror/comedy than anything. The first half of the movie for me was just like one of those movies that is so awful it's good. I mean, I really thought it was bad... but I couldn't help being entertained. But then the last half picks up and is actually pretty good. And just when I thought the movie’s plot was pretty much non-existent and that the movie was more straightforward or linear, there were a couple plot twists that are cool and unexpected.

As for visuals, there’s a lot of gore in the movie, more than I imagined there would be. You actually see people’s guts (even though they look like big sausages). There’s a humorous scene where one guy is trying to put another guy’s guts back into his body so they can get up and run, and the one guy (with his guts hanging out) is like “they’re not gonna fit!” That, to me, was just so absurd a scene that it was bordering hilarious. For other kinds of visuals, the movie isn’t the most spectacular to look at, but it has its moments. For instance, there’s a scene near the end where a character is standing up and you see the werewolves walk up right behind the person, and they’re all just standing there and it looks awesome.

There were some negatives, such as it really seems that the werewolves show up in the middle of the day, and the last werewolf attack happens when the sun is already out… yet there are still werewolves. It just seems like a gap in the lore the movie set up. Also, they couldn’t have been more obvious with the ‘silver knife’ presented in the opening scene. Chekhov’s Gun, anyone? Also, as much as other people say there is, I just did not see any real character development. All the characters stayed exactly the same throughout the movie.

Overall, if you’re looking for a B-Horror werewolf movie that’s entertaining, absurd, funny, and action-packed, I’d recommend Dog Soldiers.

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I Am McLovin!

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