Summary:
A group of military recruits runs into werewolves while training in Scotland.
My Thoughts:
Before Neil Marshall totally screwed up the “Hellboy” remake, he made some pretty awesome movies; this film, “The Descent” and “Centurion” are all pretty good, and while “Doomsday” isn’t good, it is so ludicrously bonkers that I personally consider it a guilty pleasure. This movie left quite an impression on me when I first saw it back in high school. I was just starting to get into horror film, and I remember going over to a buddy’s house to watch this and being blown away by the amount of gore they crammed into this film, but also the amount of tension that ran throughout the story. It had been years since I watched this, but in that time I’d been touting this film as one of the best werewolf movies ever made. I wont lie, I was a bit nervous to revisit it, as some of the films I watched in that time, and used to hold in high esteem, I now think are garbage. Regardless, when my roommates and I were looking for a horror flick, I suggested this, and we watched it. To my great delight, this film still holds up after almost seventeen years.
“If Little Red Riding Hood should show up with a bazooka and a bad attitude, I expect you to chin the b*tch.”
A group of recruits including Private Cooper (Kevin McKidd, “Trainspotting”) training in the Scotland wilderness come across a the wreckage of a military camp, and the only survivor Captain Ryan (Liam Cunningham, “Hunger”) warns them something is in the woods. The recruits make their way through the woods, when they happen upon a woman named Megan (Emma Cleasby, “Doomsday”) whom tells them she has a home where they can stay safely. On their way to the home werewolves attack them.
I think one of the things I love most about lower budget horror films is that they can still produce as many if not more thrills as a high budget horror film. Horror is one of the only genres where budgetary constraints shouldn’t be that big of an issue, if you have a good writer and director. Try making a high concept sci-fi film or a costume drama based in the 1700s on a shoestring budget (say $350,000), and you’re bound to wind up with a mediocre-looking product… But you could also take that shoestring budget and rent a cabin in Tennessee for a few months and shoot one of the greatest horror films ever made with that same $350,000 (“The Evil Dead”). You could take $60,000 and run around in the woods, and still produce some pretty impressive thrills (“The Blair Witch Project”). Or you could take $15,000 and just shoot at your house and end up making over $200 million and spawning a franchise (“Paranormal Activity”). While this film didn’t have quite that small of a budget, it was still pretty small ($2 million), but the things they did with that money was really impressive.
This movie’s writing sets a stage of dread really well. Marshall has a way of unnerving us before we really get into the gritty stuff. There’s a scene not long after the soldiers first start hiking through the woods, when they stop to make camp and they tell stories. The Sgt. (Sean Pertwee, “Event Horizon”) tells a story about an old war buddy who died after stepping on a landmine, and that story really sets the tone for the whole film. The writing during that scene is pretty impressive, as really, the only thing happening is the soldiers are sitting around a campfire, but somehow Marshall is really able to sell that story in a disturbing way.
The writing throughout the film is actually pretty great. The soldiers all seem to have unique personalities, the dialogue is quippy and fun, and whenever it seems as if the film is starting to loll we ramp up the tension with another attack. We learn back-stories about each of the characters in relatively natural ways, and none of the dialogue feels overly expositional or explanatory. Marshall does a great job of balancing tension and wry humor while never negating from the direness of the situation at hand.
The most fun parts of this movie are the werewolves and the havoc they cause. This movie is brutally gory, and for horror fans like me, this is the kind of stuff we gravitate towards. There are scenes where gallons of blood and handfuls of entrails just come spilling out of people; it’s enough to make Tom Savini giggle with delight. The werewolves themselves still look pretty good too. Though I do think it’s pretty obvious that the wolves are just guys in rubber suits, the way that Marshall uses the costumes works to his advantage. As a whole, they still look pretty creepy. I watched this with my roommate and his girlfriend, and when the werewolves came onscreen for the first time, my roommate said something along the lines of: “Well there’s some nightmare fuel.”
I do think this film could’ve benefited from a little bit bigger budget, because I honestly think most of this film’s problems probably stemmed from having to work around budgetary constraints. For one thing, the werewolf costumes probably could’ve looked a touch more realistic. They don’t look terrible, but there were one or two shots that definitely looked more rubbery than necessary. There are also only two locations in this movie: the woods and the home where Megan takes the soldiers. I feel like most of the woods in this movie looked the same, so it felt as if our soldiers could’ve just been running around in Neil Marshall’s backyard; there needed to be more defining features in the woods so that it felt as if our characters were traveling. Unfortunately, location scouting and traveling to those locations costs money. But look at a movie like “Predator”, which is also about people getting hunted in the woods. “Predator” is not a perfect movie, but those woods constantly changed, so it felt as if we were making progress as the characters moved. It’s a pretty small qualm to have with an otherwise pretty decent film, but when you watch enough low budget horror movies you start to pick up on small things like that.
Verdict:
Overall this is a really solid horror/action flick; it’s still certainly one of the better werewolf films I’ve seen. If you like this movie, I absolutely recommend “The Descent”, and I still think “Centurion” is a pretty great action movie (starring Michael Fassbender)... I can’t say I recommend “Doomsday”, but I personally think it’s fun.
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