Day 93: Dog Soldiers

Before he made The Descent, Neil Marshal came out swinging with this superior Werewolf movie. The premise is that a group of Scottish soldiers are doing war games in the wilderness when they stumble upon a group of Black Ops soldiers who have been torn to shreds. The big cast is quickly narrowed down until only a handful of soldiers and special operatives (plus, a local woman who gets caught in the middle) are trapped in an empty house in the countryside, fending off a handful of werewolves.

The soldiers each get distinct personalities here. Kevin McKidd, Sean Pertwee and Liam Cunningham round out the who's who of Scottish actors not named Ewan. There are a couple of hidden werewolves among those in the house, so the interplay gets tense. The biggest badasses get sidelined early on so that only the naive younger soldiers remain to do the fighting. It smacks a little of Aliens, to be sure, but is that a bad thing?

The werewolf design is top notch, the violence is gory and the acting is first rate. Without a doubt, one of my favorite horror movies. If you like werewolves, you should check it out.