Editorials
‘Dog Soldiers’ – Werewolf Action Movie Still Delivers a Mean Bite 22 Years Later
After a relatively sparse decade of werewolf cinema, the early 2000s unleashed a new wave of fur, fangs and bone-breaking transformations. Ginger Snaps was ahead of the curve, especially considering how it approached the same old ideas but in a fresh way. Nevertheless, Dog Soldiers was also bracing and innovative; Neil Marshall delivered a high-concept actioner bristling with colorful characters, entertaining melee, and, of course, ferocious lycans so dissimilar from prior celluloid renderings. While not exactly the first of its kind — Full Eclipse crossed genres back in the ’90s — Dog Soldiers did lead this sudden charge of hyper-violent and stylized werewolf films.
In spite of the saturation of American werewolves, these creatures can go wherever storytellers please. Marshall, perhaps inspired by England’s enduring Beast of Bodmin legend, created vague fakelore for his film’s scenic setting; the tranquil Scottish Highlands were really the hunting grounds for an old family of uncanny predators. Folks would more likely expect to see Nessie in a Highlands-set creature-feature than werewolves, which is why Dog Soldiers is a bit brilliant. In a sense it is like Predator, another film where gun-toting soldier types come across a fierce monster existing in an unlikely habitat.
Dog Soldiers straddles the fence between comedy and horror, but it is more slyly offbeat than outright smug. That odd wit is visible from the start as an amorous pair of campers is coitus-interrupted in the worst way imaginable; the pants-tent zipper gag seen in the cold open is equally amusing and thrilling. This first death signals the film’s escalating sense of gallows humor. Once beyond a dead-serious dog killing toward the beginning — an act devastating for both those animal lovers watching and the story’s protagonist — Marshall resumes funny business without sacrificing tension. That inclination for action antics and quipping, however, was absent in the director’s even more harrowing follow-up, The Descent.
Image: In Dog Soldiers, Captain Ryan finally succumbs to his inner beast.
Other genre films can get by without interesting characters, but Dog Soldiers would have had a hard time being as memorable and beloved as it is without the likes of Cooper, Wells and Spoon on the frontline. This ragtag squad of six soldiers on a training exercise could have easily been run-of-the-mill and underwritten had Marshall chosen to focus on the action and werewolves. Quite the opposite, he did a bang-up job of making these uniformly dressed and styled men distinguishable and, most importantly, worth caring about.
Not everyone will have warm fuzzies for the film’s obvious military narrative, but Marshall put some much needed meat on the story’s bones. This is not just a simple case of soldier boys battling werewolves. On the contrary, the story gives its audience serious food for thought as Cooper — played perfectly by Kevin McKidd after Jason Statham backed out in favor of Ghosts of Mars — sees things differently following that dog incident. Had Cooper obeyed orders from his near-miss captain (Liam Cunningham), viewers would have never been endeared to him. Trusted him. Instead, that moment of noncompliance drew a clear line in the sand and Dog Soldiers waged war on harmful forms of masculinity.
Even as the film flies into its siege scenario, Marshall stays on the characters. The uncaring and selfish Captain Ryan, the sole survivor of that now-extinct special forces unit Cooper failed out of, has since joined the core cast. All but twirling his invisible villain mustache as everyone else struggles to keep the werewolves at bay, Ryan only emphasizes how much better off Cooper is with his original team. Unlike the alternative, Sergeant Wells (Sean Pertwee) and his men give a damn about one another. They fight tooth and nail to protect their own and others, and no fallen soldier goes unnoticed. They feel free to be vulnerable. That kind of shrewd upset of gender expectations is refreshing for a film overrun with male aggression and open displays of machismo.
The biggest hurdle when making any werewolf film is the werewolves themselves. Marshall could not have chosen a more challenging creature for his first feature, but fans would say that ambition paid off in the end. With a decent budget of around £2.3 million, though, Dog Soldiers had a far better chance of succeeding than others. Even so, the design of these particular beasts can make or break the whole deal. Here the werewolves are peculiar and quite unlike previous specimens. As opposed to the typical on-screen depictions, Marshall’s breed is eerily graceful as well as intimidating. For once, that standard full coverage of fur is absent; only the heads, which are awfully oversized and wolfish, give away the identity of these popular monsters. More wulver-esque than not, this interpretation is downright haunting.
Image: Cooper and the other soldiers in Dog Soldiers.
With action editing as rapidfire as the characters’ armaments, Dog Soldiers can be tricky to follow at times. However, the film also does not disappoint in the combat department. In what actor Pertwee once described as “Zulu with werewolves,” the final act erupts into a sanguinary symphony of violence. The grainy and shadow-heavy presentation risks hiding that beautiful carnage — the recent 4K restoration remedies that potential issue — which, ultimately, is what separates the film from the pack. The insatiable turnskins, who are portrayed by dancers and never a product of VFX, are not the mindless killing machines of the past. No, these hairy assassins are weirdly elegant even as they slaughter half the cast. Overall the fracas is skillfully put together, not slapdash. The only thing missing is an agonizing, attention-seizing transformation. The suits ate up a good chunk of the budget, so Marshall resorted to an off-screen sequence in the vein of The Curse of the Werewolf. This entailed the use of suspenseful cutaway and hinged on the reactions of the other characters.
Another appeal of Dog Soldiers is its timelessness. The film’s vintage is apparent to the modern eye, yet the story’s timestamp is nonspecific. There is nothing seasonable about the setting or themes — the low-key study of toxic masculinity fits into any era — and the military presence is also evergreen. The fairytale element adds rather than takes away; the men and Emma Cleasby’s character being lured into a “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” situation never gets old, either. All in all, there is an unfading quality to Marshall’s first outing that makes it watchable at any given point of time.
The incredible highs of werewolf horror make up for the many, many lows. And after twenty-plus years, Dog Soldiers remains a benchmark. When this film first burst onto the scene, there was nothing like it at that point in the werewolf genre; rather than succumbing to the hirsute howlers who wished them dead, the prey fought back using both their natural wits and special training. It was a simple pitch done remarkably well. This one film certainly raised the bar for future werewolf horrors, although none come close to matching its unique bite force.
Horrors Elsewhere is a recurring column that spotlights a variety of movies from all around the globe, particularly those not from the United States. Fears may not be universal, but one thing is for sure — a scream is understood, always and everywhere.
Image: A Dog Soldiers poster.
With there being an overlap between wrestling fans and horror fans, it only made sense for WWE Studios to produce See No Evil. And much like The Rock’s Walking Tall and John Cena’s The Marine, this 2006 slasher was designed to jumpstart a popular wrestler’s crossover career; superstar Glenn “Kane” Jacobs stepped out of the ring and into a run-down hotel packed with easy prey. Director Gregory Dark and writer Dan Madigan delivered what the WWE had hoped to be the beginning of “a villain franchise in the vein of Jason, Freddy and Pinhead.” In hindsight, See No Evil and its unpunctual sequel failed to live up to expectations. Regardless of Jacob Goodnight’s inability to reach the heights of horror’s greatest icons, his films are not without their simple slasher pleasures.
See No Evil (previously titled Goodnight and Eye Scream Man) was a last gasp for a dying trend. After all, the Hollywood resurgence of big-screen slashers was on the decline by the mid-2000s. Even so, that first Jacob Goodnight offering is well aware of its genre surroundings: the squalid setting channels the many torturous playgrounds found in the Saw series and other adjacent splatter pics. Also, Gregory Dark’s first major feature — after mainly delivering erotic thrillers and music videos — borrows the mustardy, filthy and sweaty appearance of Platinum Dunes’ then-current horror output. So, visually speaking, See No Evil fits in quite well with its contemporaries.
Despite its mere setup — young offenders are picked off one by one as they clean up an old hotel — See No Evil is more ambitious than anticipated. Jacob Goodnight is, more or less, another unstoppable killing machine whose traumatic childhood drives him to torment and murder, but there is a process to his mayhem. In a sense, a purpose. Every new number in Goodnight’s body count is part of a survival ritual with no end in sight. A prior and poorly mended cranial injury, courtesy of Steven Vidler’s character, also influences the antagonist’s brutal streak. As with a lot of other films where a killer’s crimes are religious in nature, Goodnight is viscerally concerned with the act of sin and its meaning. And that signature of plucking out victims’ eyes is his way of protecting his soul.
Image: The cast of See No Evil enters the Blackwell Hotel.
Survival is on the mind of just about every character in See No Evil, even before they are thrown into a life-or-death situation. Goodnight is processing his inhumane upbringing in the only way he can, whereas many of his latest victims have committed various crimes in order to get by in life. The details of these offenses, ranging from petty to severe, can be found in the film’s novelization. This more thorough media tie-in, also penned by Madigan, clarified the rap sheets of Christine (Christina Vidal), Kira (Samantha Noble), Michael (Luke Pegler) and their fellow delinquents. Readers are presented a grim history for most everyone, including Vidler’s character, Officer Frank Williams, who lost both an arm and a partner during his first encounter with the God’s Hand Killer all those years ago. The younger cast is most concerned with their immediate wellbeing, but Williams struggles to make peace with past regrets and mistakes.
While the first See No Evil film makes a beeline for its ending, the literary counterpart takes time to flesh out the main characters and expound on scenes (crucial or otherwise). The task requires nearly a third of the book before the inmates and their supervisors even reach the Blackwell Hotel. Yet once they are inside the death trap, the author continues to profile the fodder. Foremost is Christine and Kira’s lock-up romance born out of loyalty and a mutual desire for security against their enemies behind bars. And unlike in the film, their sapphic relationship is confirmed. Meanwhile, Michael’s misogyny and bigotry are unmistakable in the novelization; his racial tension with the story’s one Black character, Tye (Michael J. Pagan), was omitted from the film along with the repeated sexual exploitation of Kira. These written depictions make their on-screen parallels appear relatively upright. That being said, by making certain characters so prickly and repulsive in the novelization, their rare heroic moments have more of an impact.
Madigan’s book offers greater insight into Goodnight’s disturbed mind and harrowing early years. As a boy, his mother regularly doled out barbaric punishments, including pouring boiling water onto his “dangling bits” if he ever “sinned.” The routine maltreatment in which Goodnight endured makes him somewhat sympathetic in the novelization. Also missing from the film is an entire character: a back-alley doctor named Miles Bennell. It was he who patched up Goodnight after Williams’ desperate but well-aimed bullet made contact in the story’s introduction. Over time, this drunkard’s sloppy surgery led to the purulent, maggot-infested head wound that, undoubtedly, impaired the hulking villain’s cognitive functions and fueled his violent delusions.
Image: Dan Madigan’s novelization for See No Evil.
An additional and underlying evil in the novelization, the Blackwell’s original owner, is revealed through random flashbacks. The author described the hotel’s namesake, Langley Blackwell, as a deviant who took sick pleasure in defiling others (personally or vicariously). His vile deeds left a dark stain on the Blackwell, which makes it a perfect home for someone like Jacob Goodnight. This notion is not so apparent in the film, and the tie-in adaptation says it in a roundabout way, but the building is haunted by its past. While literal ghosts do not roam these corridors, Blackwell’s lingering depravity courses through every square inch of this ill-reputed establishment and influences those who stay too long.
The selling point of See No Evil back then was undeniably Kane. However, fans might have been disappointed to see the wrestler in a lurking and taciturn role. The focus on unpleasant, paper-thin “teenagers” probably did not help opinions, either. Nevertheless, the first film is a watchable and, at times, well-made straggler found in the first slasher revival’s death throes. A modest budget made the decent production values possible, and the director’s history with music videos allowed the film a shred of style. For meatier characterization and a harder demonstration of the story’s dog-eat-dog theme, though, the novelization is worth seeking out.
Jen and Sylvia Soska, collectively The Soska Sisters, were put in charge of 2014’s See No Evil 2. This direct continuation arrived just in time for Halloween, which is fitting considering its obvious inspiration. In place of the nearly deserted hospital in Halloween II is an unlucky morgue receiving all the bodies from the Blackwell massacre. Familiar face Danielle Harris played the ostensible final girl, a coroner whose surprise birthday party is crashed by the resurrected God’s Hand Killer. In an effort to deliver uncomplicated thrills, the Soskas toned down the previous film’s heavy mythos and religious trauma, as well as threw in characters worth rooting for. This sequel, while more straightforward than innovative, pulls no punches and even goes out on a dark note.
The chances of seeing another See No Evil with Kane attached are low, especially now with Glenn Jacobs focusing on a political career. Yet there is no telling if Jacob Goodnight is actually gone, or if he is just playing dead.
Image: Katharine Isabelle and Lee Majdouba’s characters don’t notice Kane’s Jacob Goodnight character is behind them in See No Evil 2.
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