Starring: Sean Pertwee, Kevin McKidd, Emma Cleasby

Directed  and Written by: Neil Marshall

The Story: I’m neither British nor a soldier (I’m just a random Canadian guy), so I’m probably not as qualified to review this movie as I should be. But what the hell, I like this mindless crap so full steam ahead.

It starts out with a couple of Scottish campers getting ripped apart by something. The standard “Blair Witch”-type “Ooh, what’s out there?” followed by campers getting dragged out of their tents and presumably being killed. Then we get into the story. A British soldier, Cooper, is trying to get to get into Special Forces. He is failed by the examiner, a rather unpleasant fellow by the name of Ryan, because he refuses to kill a guard dog that scented him out. To make a point, Ryan kills the dog himself, thus establishing that he’s a hard-ass among hard-asses.

Later, Cooper and his fellow “squaddies” along with his sergeant, Wells (please forgive my use of British slang, I know it’s rather clumsy) get dumped into a forest in Scotland to get into a training exercise with some Special Forces guys. War games or something, I think. It gets established that the local yokels think the forest is haunted and has a history of disappearances. After a while, they find the Special Forces guys, or should I say their remains. Bwa-hah-hah-hah. The Special Forces guys are all chewed up and the only survivor is, of course, Ryan. He keeps going on about how “There was supposed to be just one!”.

Eventually the werewolves attack and kill one of the soldiers, along with cutting open Wells’ stomach. The remaining soldiers run onto the road, when they find a naturalist named Megan who drives them to a nearby forest? Did I mention that the farmhouse is isolated? That the family inhabiting it is missing? Or that Ryan was here to capture werewolves for military purposes, and has been scratched up nastily by a werewolf? Or that Megan is not all that she seems?

It sounds unbearably cheesy, I know. But I thought it was rather cool. It’s a great hybrid of Aliens and werewolf movies; I like hybridization as well as cheesy costumes, which are better to look at than CGI crap. Just serious enough not to be twee, annoying “Scream” trash. Sean Pertwee was Wells; Kevin McKidd, who was in Trainspotting, was Cooper and Emma Cleasby and Liam Cunningham were Megan and Ryan respectively.

Best Lines: “SAUSAGES!”-Wells when he gets to the farmhouse and sees his exposed intestines.

“Ryan. Have ya tried lickin' your balls yet?”-Cooper at the end of the movie, when Ryan the werewolf tries to kill him.

“If you see Little Red Riding Hood, I expect you to chin the bitch!”-Wells to his soldiers when they find the dead Special Forces guys.

“I hope I give you the sh*ts, you f***ing wimp”-Spoon, one of the soldiers, before he gets eaten by a werewolf. Man, if I have to go out as some appetif for a big dog, I hope that I’ll have the presence of mind to make some smart-aleck remark before I get eaten.

 Are you kidding me?

1.) Megan lead the soldiers back to the farmhouse so that the werewolves can get them easily (she’s a wolf herself and the werewolves live in the house). Given that werewolves in this movie are invulnerable to everything except fire and silver, isn’t it a moot point where these guys are? Well, no, because the farm uses gas for its oven, so that’s an explode-able place right there. I’m sure that it’s explained at the end of the movie (with a little montage) but I didn't see it.

2.) Now if the British government knew about something that seemed to roughly confirm to werewolf myths, wouldn’t it be prudent to, oh I don’t know, allocate some of your budget to give the Special Forces guys you are sending after them [unwrite]ING SILVER BULLETS? You know, just in case. I imagine even the hilariously under-funded military of my home country could manage to snag some cutlery from the Parliamentary cafeteria.

3.) Remember those two Scottish campers at the beginning of the movie? The man had a silver dagger with him. The werewolves took the dagger back to the farmhouse, which is good for Cooper since he gets to stab Ryan with it. I would think keeping a sharp piece of silver in the house would be really, really irresponsible if you were the head of a family of werewolves. Maybe some lupine Dr. Phil should shout “Get Real!" at you for your sin of stupidity.

Nudity and Sex: Well, the werewolves are naked. You’ll have to make do with that, you freaks.

Huh?: Maybe I’m embarrassing myself by asking this question, but would a set piece of the Special Forces curriculum be “Shooting the Dog?” If so, would it be a pass-or-fail thing, as portrayed in this movie? Again, I have no firsthand experience of this, having no military experience. Like Eric Idle said, “I’m not a pacifist, I’m a coward”. Note from Dante: I'm not a Special Forces guy either, so I could be wrong...but if Ryan was the evaluator for Cooper...and had the final say on whether or not Cooper could join his unit, this might be fairly true. Besides, Ryan did have a point. Its not whether or not killing the dog was right or wrong, its whether or not Cooper would obey a direct order that he had an objection with.

On the subject of embarrassing myself, would British people necessarily speak like 1960’s Carnaby Street gangsters? I knew a couple of British people when I was teaching in China, but I never heard them refer to each other as “geezer” or refer to the crapper as the “Karzai”.

As mentioned above, the werewolves confirm to the myths of invulnerability to silver and whatnot. So how come one gets its arm chopped off? And why does Ryan get a sword shoved through him (sans ill effects, of course?) I don’t think the sword is silver itself, and the script itself points out that werewolves wouldn’t keep silver in their homes.

The Final Judgment: Shockingly enough, a few new horror movies are actually watchable. After years of “Scream”-esque crap being shoved down our movie-going and/or too-goddamn-lazy-to-change-the-channel gullets, this trend is actually rather refreshing. This movie would fit in with the above-mentioned new trend. I give this four devil heads (which is partially derived from the amusing “Snatch”-esque dialogue).