Dog Soldiers (2002)

Could this be the British werewolf equivalent of 'Aliens'? a group of soldiers forced into a tight space, trapped and being taken down one by one, it does feel like it when you watch.

But lets not take anything away from this film, its a low budget basic thriller which works beautifully utilizing all the right tricks in the book. The werewolves are kept out of sight for much of the time, lots of shadows and darkness, a good barren wilderness location, tense sweaty and claustrophobic with some good amounts of gore, not overblown.

Marshall really has taken a leaf outta Cameron's book, a leaf? nay...a whole flippin bush! as previously said the film really is 'Aliens' with werewolves but its so damn fun to watch (and British made) that you have to forgive the blatant concept rip off. The small group of soldiers really work well together and you do care for them as Marshall wisely builds the characters before hand, you know they're all gonna die but never sure which one will remain in tact at the end. Of course everyone is rather cliched and predictable with their dialog and portrayals, Cunningham is the nasty outsider ('Burke') who obviously will die but calmly growls and snarls his lines of doom to the rest in the mean time...just asking for it really.

Some brilliant sequences that go from outright horror to dark gallows humour such as Pertwee having his bowels/intestines superglued back inside him after a nasty attack. Things get quite tense towards the end as the lycans get too close for comfort and we start to see more glimpses of the pretty solid effects used. Men in suits of course and they do look original in design albeit a little like over grown Alsatians.

Its gritty, dirty, bloody, basic, effortlessly British, has cool movie posters and you want Cunningham to die right from the very start after he kills that poor doggie. At times it does feel like it could use a bit of Hollywood to really make more of an impact for some sequences and the score seems a tad lackluster. Overall this is a great human vs werewolf flick that really does show what 'Underworld' could of been.