Films: 2000s
(2002) Dog Soldiers
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Dog Soldiers
Director: Neil Marshall
Release: 2002
Werewolf movies pose a particular challenge to genre filmmakers. The crux of the story is that a human will transform into a wolf. That's a difficult feat to create convincingly, and so the subcategory of horror films containing werewolves is populated with some very ineffective examples of metamorphosis visuals (the "Howling" sequels being the chief offenders, and Wes Craven's relatively poor 2005 contribution "Cursed" being another, as well as - but more forgivable - George Waggner's "The Wolf Man").
Then there is the question of what to do with the basic mechanism of the werewolf as story element. "The Howling" treated it as a socio-sexual equation, "An American Werewolf in London" looked at it as a cultural farce, and "Wolf" considered the power politics of the inside animal coming out.
Neil Marshall borrows little bits and pieces of his predecessors ideas, in his 2002 film "Dog Soldiers," and then he amplifies the message that Ridley Scott and company have always maintained in the "Alien" franchise. If there were monsters out there, Marshall maintains, they would be weaponized by the real monster with which we already live - the military industrial complex.
Marshall wastes little time establishing this milieu.
After a camping couple is torn apart in their tent by something inhuman in the Scottish highlands, "Dog Soldiers" picks up the story of Kevin McKidd as Private Cooper, training to join a brutal Scottish special forces unit. Cooper fails and falls out with the unit leader, Captain Ryan.
Cooper ends up attached to regular army and his unit is sent into the highlands on war games. Shortly into the exercise, they discover a rival team torn to shreds, the one survivor being Cooper's Captain Ryan. Werewolves descend upon the company.
The soldiers hole up in a farmhouse, populated by a researcher named Megan (Emma Cleasby) who claims she was stranded in the highlands while documenting the monsters. The werewolves assault the house over and over, while the Cooper and the soldiers unravel the truth of their situation, Ryan's presence in the highlands, and Megan's relationship with the werewolves.
One of the brilliant moves Marshall makes with his lycanthropes is that he eschews computer graphics in favor of massive, simple and realistic body suits. By cloaking his werewolves in darkness, mist and creative lighting, Marshall conveys the impression that the creatures are really in the room with Cooper and company, because they are, in fact, in the same space as the actors.
Another major plus in the production of "Dog Soldiers" is that the cast consists of relative unknowns, each with healthy doses of talent. The confines of the house and the inhuman siege make for some more than adequate scene-chewing opportunities, and Cunningham and Cooper make good use of the time. Sean Pertwee (son of Doctor Who veteran Jon Pertwee) is also notable as Sergeant Harry G. Wells and Thomas Lockyer takes his anti-werewolf rage to over-the-top territory as Corporal Bruce Campbell (genre aficionados will begin to notice the nomenclature of famous writer and horror movie actors, here).
Marshall allows himself latitude for some broad moments as well, playing with the conventions of the genre. A dog yanks the bandages from Wells' belly, whose guts are ready to spill. Lockyer becomes so irrational with a werewolf that even it seems to pause at his ferocity. A minor tsunami of blood runs from the back of a truck in which a werewolf has eaten. These moment verge on camp, but never betray the deadly serious subtext of "Dog Soldiers." The victims in this film are the prey of more than shape changers.
What Marshall is getting at in his werewolf movie is that structure of military thought is such that it can morph, under the right conditions, into a threat to the state which it was meant to protect.
This is chiefly illustrated by Ryan, whose intentions have become so twisted that he out-werewolfs even the tribe of older, more seasoned monsters. In a broader sense, as well, the whole mission upon which Cooper's company is sent is a shifting thing.
The beast within is that the Scottish soldiers are expendable and conditioned to accept that tenet. When they resist that desitiny, in "Dog Soldiers," they literally have to level the structure around them to survive.
Cooper ends the film standing in the literal wreckage of the building that housed him, but he also stands in the wreckage of the civilization that programmed him to fight without question for God and country. Its fanged nature has been made clear. That the society around Cooper resists the truth of legend, and of contemporary political lessons, is indicated by the montage of tabloid front pages that mock Cooper's later claims about his experience.
As Megan says, if werewolves have been real all this time, what else could be real and living among us?
"Dog Soldiers" is a film that celebrates its genre, but also a film that prompts questions about the veracity of the world as it appears. Lurking just beyond the tree line, the rules of reality are subject to older and harsher influences. Worse, the people who run the system might, Marshall proposes, employ those dark secrets. Our survival then, according to "Dog Soldiers," in a government replete with such schemes depends on sustained ignorance. It is a powerful metaphor and it carries "Dog Soldiers" into the territory of political horror cinema, akin to George Romero's "Night of the Living Dead."
James O'Brien
Cinescare Staff
Dog Soldiers, 2002
"Dog Soldiers" is a film that celebrates its genre, but also a film that prompts questions about the veracity of the world as it appears. Lurking just beyond the tree line, the rules of reality are subject to older and harsher influences. Worse, the people who run the system might, Marshall proposes, employ those dark secrets.
