The name Dog Soldiers does not have you picture a horror movie. Instead, you may think of a Disney film where they have dogs saving the day. Another option is you may picture a film like Valiant where we get to see the struggles of carrier pigeons. A possible thought is you think of a group of dogs that band together to save their neighborhood tree and are led by a retired police dog. If you even think ANY of these then you would be sadly mistaken.

Dog Soldiers is a plain and simple action horror film brought to us by the director behind Doomsday (Neil Marshall) and The Decent. This film has a rather simple plot. The story revolves around a small squad of British regular army who are sent into a wooded area to work with a Special Forces group on a training exercise.

The main character, who is named Cooper (Kevin McKidd), we are shown had a run-in with the Commander of this special forces unit during a training exercise, months previous and had been washed out. This conflict comes in as the movie progresses as Captain Ryan (Liam Cunningham) is the only one to survive a massacre of the Special Forces squad. As the group works to retreat to a safe location one soldier is killed, and Sergeant Wells (Sean Pertwee) is attacked.

As the team continues to retreat they come across a zoologist named Megan (Emma Cleasby). She is able to lead the survivors to a remote cabin. Things get worse as night falls as the cabin becomes surrounded by more than one potential assailant outside of the building.

The movie moves quickly and I have to admit the look of the werewolves when finally seen is great. They did an awesome job on the makeup and design of the creatures. The one thing I really enjoyed is how they allowed the werewolves to have a brain. There was more of one of them and they showed how they would hunt as a pack and used their intelligence when hunting the soldiers.

There are some surprising twists in the film and there is one scene that is blatantly obvious to this movie fan as a throwback to the movie Zulu. There is a comment by one soldier on how it’s so much like an experience that happened to the British Army back during the time of the Zulu. During this battle, several men are trapped at a lone outpost surrounded by thousands of Zulu warriors. This is an actual battle from the British Army History and the way it was referenced in the film was great for this movie buff.

An additional piece that got me in this film is one of the soldiers who has a name well-known to Horror Fans. The name of the character just happens to be Bruce Campbell, and yes it’s just a character name, but if not the perfect one for a Horror film.

I will say the movie does have a somewhat typical ending but the movie itself is well worth a rental in my humble opinion. I say this especially if you’re a fan of Lycans especially ones that are designed so convincingly. I will add this last bit about one of the chilling moments in the film. This moment comes when those remaining realize the werewolves have been let in the house and we see them slowly come into view ready to strike.