Dog Soldiers (film)

Dog Soldiers
British quad poster for Dog Soldiers
Directed by	Neil Marshall
Produced by	Brian Patrick O'Toole Christopher Figg Tom Reeve David E. Allen
Written by	Neil Marshall
Starring	Sean Pertwee Kevin McKidd Emma Cleasby Liam Cunningham
Music by	Mark Thomas
Cinematography	Sam McCurdy
Edited by	Neil Marshall
Distributed by	Pathé
Release date	10 May 2002
Running time	105 minutes
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Box office	£5 million

Dog Soldiers is a 2002 British action horror film written and directed by Neil Marshall, and starring Kevin McKidd, Sean Pertwee and Liam Cunningham. A British production, set in the highlands of Scotland, it was filmed almost entirely in Luxembourg. In the U.S., it premiered as a Sci Fi Pictures telefilm on the Sci Fi Channel.

A couple is camping in the Scottish Highlands. The woman gives the man a silver letter opener as a present; shortly afterwards they are killed in their tent by an unseen assailant. Meanwhile, Private Cooper is seen running through a forest in North Wales. He attacks his pursuers but is overwhelmed and wrestled to the ground. It turns out Cooper is trying to join a special forces unit but fails when he refuses to shoot a dog in cold blood. He is returned to his unit by Captain Richard Ryan.

Four weeks later a squad of six regular British Army soldiers, including Cooper, is dropped into the Scottish Highlands, somewhat fed up about missing an England–Germany World Cup match. Expecting to carry out a training mission against a Special Air Service (SAS) unit, they only find their savaged remains. A badly-wounded Captain Ryan, the only survivor, makes cryptic references to what attacked them. Unseen predators attack the troops. While retreating, Bruce is impaled on a tree branch, killing him, and Sergeant Wells is attacked. He is rescued by Cooper and carried to a rural roadside where the group encounters Megan, a zoologist who takes them to a lonely house, belonging to an unknown family. The soldiers who remain are Wells, Cooper, Spoon, Joe and Terry. As dark falls, the house is surrounded by the attackers: to the soldiers' incredulity, these are revealed to be werewolves.

They go to get in the Land Rover but it has been destroyed by the werewolves. The soldiers maintain a desperate defence against the werewolves, believing that if they can make it to sunrise, the werewolves will revert to human form. Cooper and Megan then treat Wells' wounds. After Terry is abducted and ammunition runs short, they realise that they will not last and decide to try to escape. Spoon creates a diversion while Joe steals a Land Rover from the garage. When he gets in, he sees Terry in the garage being eaten alive by a werewolf, which rips off Terry's head and throws it at the windscreen. Joe drives up to the house door, then realizes that a werewolf was hiding in the back seat and goes down fighting.