BARBELITH underground
 

Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.


Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Dog Soldiers

  
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
10:35 / 12.05.02
Visceral in the most literal sense, sometimes witty, sometimes grotesque, Dog Soldiers is worth seeing. The action style slips from film to reality tv and back again, the cheeky chappies may grate from time to time, and the monsters are unabashedly hokey. It doesn't matter. It's tense, funny, nasty as hell. Eat first.
 
 
rizla mission
15:35 / 12.05.02
I wanna go and see this some time soon.

Low budget British werewolf action movies rock even if they're terrible, and by the sound of things, this one's at least half decent..

Hope it's not too laddy / "let's kick arse" orientated though, what with all the characters being soliers and all..
 
 
rizla mission
15:35 / 12.05.02
Soldiers, even.
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
10:30 / 13.05.02
It's not that laddy, and it's not, thank God, too gung ho. There's a definite 'we're all in this together, and you're my mates' aspect to it - but then, they are.
 
 
grant
15:01 / 14.05.02
werewolves at war, then?
 
 
Rev. Wright
09:23 / 15.05.02
A Low Budget British Horror film, in the vein of Raimi and Jackson, what a great idea. I think that low budget genre films will build up the British film industry, and Horror and Sci fi and two genres that the British have done best.
S
P
O
I
L
E
R
S.
.
.
.
.
.
Dog Soldiers creates a vibe that reminds me of Big Budget American action films, such as Predator, and Drama Documentary, such as Bloody Sunday. Sean Pertwee gives an outstanding performance, which should get him noticed in the US. The graphicness of the gore, gave me flashbacks to the late 70's and early 80's, brilliant, being both shocking and realistic. The rubber werewolf costumes are shot well, hinting at their form, rather than showing too much and giving the game away, nice. But........

The film is rubbish, sorry to say, but frankly, its a clumsy cliched mess, that gets too complicated for the director to handle. Yes, he did write, and edit it too, but.... As soon as I heard the lines 'I'm not going, I'm not going', ripped from Apocalypse Now (One of the finest moments in that film), I staretd to doubt the film. What made things worse was teh over use of the frame dropping, during teh supposed hand held documenatry style camera work. It was too much, and should of been used more sparingly. It detracted from the film.
There are huge holes in the plot, and soo much confusion within the narrative, due to bad performances and direction, even that violence couldn't strengthen it. The Megan character, forced to not wear a bra to produce nipple shots, was appalling, bad acting, bad dialogue, awful plot device. Onwe could see teh references to Aliens, Night of the living Dead, Bad Taste and Evil Dead, but it never managed to handle itself as well as those films. It tried to reference too much and becomes a mess of ideas and bad jokes.
I found myself laughing out loud at moments meant to be serious, due to some of the awfulness of teh film, a real reminder of what makes a B Movie, suchas Plan 9 from Outer Space. Just plain bad film making at times that shocks you to think, How the fuck did this get in teh cinemas.

I'd love to meet the Producer, if he can get this script made then I'd like to talk about some ideas.

Sorry Neil, great to see the effort, but next time, keep within your range and keep it simple.
 
  
Add Your Reply