Dog Soldiers - Film Review

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GCSE English course work.

Film Review

Michael Johnson

Film :  Dog Soldiers

Six soldiers, an abandoned house, a full moon and werewolves. Welcome to Dog Soldiers. Written and directed by Neil Marshall, the werewolf genre was given a new twist in 2002 as the classic platoon movie was combined with a werewolf film, the one liner with face-in-pillow horror, the lads mag with the horror story.

British Werewolf films were virtually non-existent before Dog Soldiers, directors preferring Vampires or the Undead. Since Dog Soldiers, Werewolves have been as common as creaking doors in a deserted mansion on a rainy night, from Wolverine from X-men to the Twilight saga.

Dog Soldiers was written and directed by Neil Marshall, a Newcastle born director, who cites Raiders of the Lost Ark as his inspiration for film directing. Harrison Ford’s role in Raiders of the Lost Ark is very similar to that of Kevin McKidd’s role as Cooper in Dog Soldiers. Both characters provide the audience with behind your sofa horror, laugh out loud hilarity and macho muscle buff! Marshall’s raw talent is complimented well by Mark Thomas’s  soundtrack and the production work of Christopher Figg who drew on his experience with Hellraiser.

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Our six heroes arrive in the desolate Scottish countryside, via chopper, believing what faces them is a mundane, run of the mill training exercise. The troops think that their worst case scenario is missing the England-Germany football match. They discover a worse fate than losing another penalty shootout - a pack of ravenous werewolves.

The platoon are first confronted by Ryan, a wounded British Special Forces Captain, and what looks like the bloody and slaughtered remains of Ryan’s supposedly elite squad. Before Cooper and co. get a chance to gather their breath - or say ‘silver bullets’-  hairy creatures ...

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