Dog Soldiers

Filmmaker Neil Marshall borrows liberally from the “survivors under siege” classics Night of the Living Dead and Aliens for his action-packed 2002 feature film debut, a reworking of the werewolf flick. Marshall drops his full moon boogie in the deep misty forests of the Scottish Highlands, where a platoon of soldiers on weekend war game maneuvers is hunted by a wolf pack. Sean Pertwee and Kevin McKidd are the career soldiers who hole up in an isolated farmhouse with a wounded Special Forces officer (Liam Cunningham) and a backwoods naturalist (Emma Cleasby) who knows more than she's saying. Marshall inserts familiar tropes into a conspiratorial premise, dangling clues for observant viewers between the blasts of black humor, bloody horror, and action heroics. Marshall is busier today as a director of high-end TV spectacle (he helmed two of the most muscular episodes of Game of Thrones to date), but as this film affirms, he was one of the most promising genre directors of the 2000s. Dog Soldiers doesn't transcend the werewolf genre, but rather embraces it, energizes it, and watches the fur fly. Presented in a newly remastered edition overseen by Marshall, extras include audio commentary by the director, a “making-of” documentary, a production featurette, Marshall's 1999 debut short film “Combat,” and photo galleries. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)