Characters / Dog Soldiers

Cooper

Pvt. Cooper

Played By: Kevin McKidd

• Animal Motifs: Cooper is associated with dogs, he is loyal to his squad and has a fondness towards dogs. His enemy Ryan has no qualms about killings dogs and Cooper is also in a bloody battle against werewolves.
• Brave Scot: Cooper is Scottish and is The Leader of the team once the sarge is taken out of action. He's the only one who doesn't freak out, and keeps a cool head consistently through the whole duration of the plot.
• Combat Breakdown: Invokes it verbatim when discussing their situation with Megan.
• Combat Medic: Cooper appears to be squad medic and knows his way around an open body. He's the one that patches up Sarge.
• Deadpan Snarker: He has his moments.
• Did Not Get the Girl: Megan turns out to be a werewolf, so Cooper has to kill her^note Technically, it's Sarge who kills her.
• Establishing Character Moment: He refuses to shoot a dog simply because Ryan orders him to, even if it means he'll fail his training.
• Heroes Love Dogs: Seems to be a big dog lover. He's actually enraged when Ryan casually shoots the dog at the start - and seems to form an attachment to Sam as the film goes on.
• Karmic Jackpot: He defies a direct order to shoot one of Ryan's dogs in order to complete his Special Forces training, making it clear he can kill a dog if he needs to but absolutely will not without a good reason — as it turns out, him being failed by Ryan for this reason alone was a Lifesaving Misfortune (see below). Not only that, but Cooper and the dog Sam are the two sole survivors at the end of the film.
• Lifesaving Misfortune: Cooper in the first scene gets binned from joining the Special Forces solely because he refused to carry out a direct order from Ryan to shoot one of Ryan's own dogs for no good reason. This ultimately saves Cooper from getting torn apart by the werewolves with the rest of Ryan's team, something which Ryan and Cooper later lampshade.
• No One Gets Left Behind: When the Sarge is disemboweled, Cooper ignores his shouts and direct orders to leave him behind and save himself. When Terry is dragged off by the werewolves, Cooper's first instinct is to lead his remaining men out there and get him back, but he's forced to concede that Terry is as good as dead and that he'll be only endangering his remaining men pointlessly.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: "You think it's all over? It is now" - also doubles as an Ironic Echo.
• Shoot the Dog: Averted; he's explicitly given an order to shoot a dog to complete his SAS training but he refuses to comply. It ends up being a Karmic Jackpot for him.
• Sole Survivor: He's the only human character to make it out alive.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: With Megan. It stays unresolved.
• You Monster!: Says this to Ryan when he discovers the latter sent him and the squad into the glen as bait for the werewolves:

  "You bastard!"

Sarge

Sgt. Harry G. Wells

Played By: Sean Pertwee

• Aerosol Flamethrower: He uses this on a werewolf towards the end.
• Badass Boast: Gives one when talking to Cooper.
  "When I signed my life away on that dotted line, I fucking meant it. I am a professional soldier."
• Berserk Button: He does not take kindly to finding out that he and his troops were sent to act as bait for the werewolves.
• Dying as Yourself: Invoked. Chooses to sacrifice himself before he succumbs to the werewolf transformation.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": He's almost exclusively referred to as 'Sarge'.
• Fatal Family Photo: The picture of his wife Annie. He looks at it before he dies.
• A Father to His Men: Absolutely; his men adore him and he even chastises Ryan for 'scaring my lads'.
  • His actor jokes that he's like a mother hen to his group.
• Gutted Like a Fish: A strike by a werewolf leaves him with his intestines visibly on his outside, which leaves him too injured to fight much at all for most of the movie, until the resulting lycanthropy infection rapidly heals him.
• Happily Married: To his wife Annie. Matter-of-factly says that the thought of never seeing her again scares him the most.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Sarge blows himself, and the werewolves, up with the gas cooker.
• Hollywood Healing: Ha, if only...
• Hypocritical Heartwarming: Not that far off from being a Black Comedy case of Hypocritical Humor. He initially orders one of his men to not go being a hero, then a few minutes later when he's pinned by a werewolf slashing open his belly, he screams at Cooper to leave him and get out of here. Lampshaded by Cooper:
  Cooper: "No heroics", you bloody hypocrite.
• Mortal Wound Reveal: Inverted. Sarge reveals to Cooper that his wound from earlier has almost completely healed, even though his stomach had been slashed open and his guts had to be shoved back in.
• Not Afraid to Die: the full context of his Badass Boast above: the events of the film were just a mission like any other - only this time he's not gonna make it back. Sergeant Wells knew it was a possibility going in and fully accepts it.
• Resist the Beast: And he does a damn good job of it, remaining in control of himself thanks to his Stiff Upper Lip.
• Sophisticated as Hell: Alternates between deep, stoic monologues and curse filled rants pretty freqently
• Stiff Upper Lip: He rarely freaks out, usually remaining calm and focused in the face of impending doom.
• Sympathy for the Devil: Downplayed by him towards Megan. On the one hand, he doesn't hesitate to execute her in tranquil fury for betraying the group and trying to get him and his remaining men killed. On the other hand, he does at least somewhat acknowledge her miserable circumstances when executing her after her Motive Rant, hissing, "Somebody had to put that out of its misery." And when persuading Cooper to be the sole survivor rather than waste his life dying beside him, the Sarge uses Megan's memory to persuade Cooper if neither his dying wishes nor the other squaddies' memories will do it.
• Taking You with Me: Sarge blows himself and all the werewolves up (save one).
• Tranquil Fury: His fury when he found out about what Ryan did with sending the squad into the werewolves' territory as bait was most definitely not tranquil, but when the Sarge later hears Megan's Motive Rant — revealing that she, someone whom was far more trusted by the group and less repugnant than Ryan, is a werewolf who was desperate to escape but has now betrayed the squad — the Sarge is completely quiet in the other room as he calmly loads a clip into his gun. When Megan begins transforming, the Sarge unceremoniously shoots her, then quietly hisses, "Somebody had to put that out of its misery."
• To Unmasque the World: It's a bit of a blink-and-you'll-miss it, but a reason why Sarge tells Cooper that at least someone has to make it out alive at dawn is to make the world aware of what happened to the rest of the squad rather than let the entire incident disappear into obscurity, and he gives Cooper a roll of the film from the camera that was used as a flash-stun makeshift weapon against the werewolves to prove it.
• Werewolf Infectee: Averted. He informs Cooper of his condition, and prepares for the worst accordingly.

Megan

Megan

Played By: Emma Cleasby

• Be Careful What You Wish For: Discussed by her when she reveals she herself is a werewolf who was infected and forcibly adopted by the pack two years ago.
  "I came here [to the glen] to be at one with nature, well I got what I wanted. Now I have to live with it."
• Boom, Headshot!: When she's revealed to be The Mole, Sarge doesn't waste time and shoots her in the head mid-transformation.
• Despair Event Horizon: She admits that she started the movie truly hoping she'd make it out alive, as in hoping she'd finally escape from the Uaths for good, but after finding out that the soldiers weren't in the glen for the reasons she thought they were and they were just more unwittingly lambs to the slaughter, and after also seeing the werewolves whittle them down over the night with victory seeming further and further away, Megan gives in to despair and she helps the transformed werewolves to finish the soldiers off.
• Motive Rant: She enters one when she's tricked the soldiers into unwittingly destroying their last possible means of escape from the werewolves, revealing what happened to her and how she ended up being forcibly adopted into the pack, making it clear that she does not like being part of the werewolves' "fucked-up family", and confirming that she sincerely thought at the night's start that she could finally escape her captors with the soldiers' aid but now she's given up hope.
• The Mole: Averted, actually. She talks about wanting to 'get out' and doesn't want to be part of her 'fucked-up family'. In the end, however, she does help the werewolves into the house.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: With Cooper. It stays unresolved.
• The Smurfette Principle: The only woman in the film, barring the camper that gets offed at the beginning.

Ryan

Capt. Ryan

Played By: Liam Cunningham

• Bad People Abuse Animals: He shoots one dog (one of his own Special Forces dogs no less) for practically no reason, and later tries to shoot another dog with equally minimal provocation.
• Batman Gambit: Ryan lured Sarge's men to a particular location so they could be 'bait' for a werewolf that they could capture. It goes horribly wrong; there's more than one werewolf, and they're very smart. Ryan's entire squad gets butchered without getting off a single shot.
• Big Bad: Zig-Zagged. While the werewolves are the threat at large, he is the one who lured Sarge's team in hopes to lure werewolves in the first place, setting the plot in motion. It helps that he became bitten in the initial attack and becomes a werewolf himself and the Final Boss.
• Catchphrase: "Live and learn".
• Cold Ham: While Ryan only raises his voice once or twice, he manages to come off as over the top and slimy.
• Deadpan Snarker: Liam Cunningham has a particularly dry delivery.
  Joe: Brilliant... we either stay and snuff it, or we all go... and snuff it.
  Ryan: Decisions. Decisions.
  Joe: Laugh? I nearly died.
  Ryan: Who's stopping you?
• Disproportionate Retribution: It's heavily implied his two Bad People Abuse Animals moments were provoked solely by the fact he was annoyed at the two dogs making noise where he could hear them. Additionally, it's strongly suggested that he chose Cooper and his squad as his werewolf bait simply because he held a grudge over his previous interaction with Cooper.
• Establishing Character Moment: Ryan is introduced ordering Cooper to shoot a dog, and then doing it himself when Coop refuses.
• Evil Is Hammy: He enjoys Chewing the Scenery in a Soft-Spoken Sadist manner.
• Evil Is Petty: Sent Cooper and his team into werewolf territory as bait for the simple fact that Cooper wouldn't shoot a dog and attacked him for it when he did it himself.
• Freak Out: After his first encounter with the werewolves, Ryan is ranting and terrified.
• Hate Sink: He's not partricularly friendly or grateful to the squad when they rescue him, and from there he only continues pushing their buttons and making Joe want to cut his throat, but it reaches a climax when the squad discover he used them as bait for the werewolves when he assigned them to their training exercise.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: With a massive great sword right through the chest. Unfortunately, he's become a werewolf and so he carries on rather well.
• It's All About Me: When he's hypothermic and traumatized from the werewolves attacking his camp and leaving him the sole survivor, and when he's ironically found by Cooper's squad whom he'd been using as bait, Ryan tellingly only tells them that they need to get him to safety, not themselves.
• Jerkass: Has no problem with literally shooting dogs, and he seemingly can't stop himself subtly or not-so-subtly pushing the buttons of everyone around him when he talks, even when those people are the ones who saved his sorry ass.
• Jerkass Has a Point: He shoots down Cooper's statement they're going to get Terry back after the werewolves have dragged him off. Besides Ryan's statement to Cooper's face that the werewolves have in all probability killed Terry already, Cooper would only be putting the soldiers he still has at risk and further compromising their hold-out's defenses. Cooper angrily concedes to this.
• Karmic Death: He gets shot dead by Cooper, the same soldier whom he signed up along with his squad to unknowingly be live bait for the werewolves, which indirectly led to the deaths of the rest of the squad. He's also finished by a gunshot to the head, the exact same way he cruelly executed one of his own dogs at the start of the film.
  • He almost kills Cooper at the end, only to be distracted by Sam - the dog he previously tried to kill - long enough for Cooper to stab him with silver and shoot him.
• Karmic Transformation: He hates dogs to the point of trying to shoot them dead for ridiculous slights in extreme Kick the Dog fashion, and he ultimately gets transformed into one of the werewolves. Cooper lampshades this.
• Kick the Dog: He shoots a dog in his first scene, simply because he can.
• Laser-Guided Karma: He uses Sarge and Cooper's team as bait for the werewolf so his team can catch it off guard. Instead, Ryan's team gets slaughtered and Sarge's team comes to his rescue. And then there's the Karmic Death.
• The Load: And a very obnoxious one at that. He doesn't contribute anything helpful or meaningful to the group, even after his wounds regenerate to the point where he doesn't literally drag the soldiers down with him anymore, and instead he constantly needles everyone and pushes their buttons despite them saving his life and being the only reasons why he's still breathing.
• Motive Rant: Downplayed. When pressed and all but interrogated by Cooper and Sarge for an explanation, Ryan explains what he and his team were doing in the glen trying to catch a werewolf,and where the squad themselves came into their plan, though it takes a lot of talking and a physical death-threat from Cooper to push each section of Ryan's explanation along.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Zig-Zagged. He has a Freak Out after barely surviving the massacre of his entire squad by the werewolves, then he quickly reverts to his a calm, collected, Soft-Spoken Sadist disposition. It clues Cooper in that Ryan's wounds got him infected with lycanthropy.
• Smug Snake: He executed the operation to attempt capturing a werewolf for the Special Weapons Division, but didn't account for there being more than one werewolf. He's also very smug and jerkass.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: He almost never really raises his voice, and he's played by Liam Cunningham to boot.
• Villains Want Mercy: He has the nerve to beg the soldiers whom he used as werewolf bait without their knowledge to get him — and specifically him — to safety when he's injured and traumatized with the next nightfall approaching.
• Werewolf Infectee: Played straight. He's bitten by a werewolf, and doesn't bother to tell the rest of the group about it, although Cooper figures it out pretty quickly.

Spoon

Pvt. "Spoon" Witherspoon

Played By: Darren Morfitt

• Agent Mulder: He accepts the existence of werewolves pretty fast.
  Cooper: That's werewolves to you and me.
  Joe: You're taking the piss.
  Spoon: What? It makes perfect sense to me.
• Badass Normal: He not only fights a werewolf in hand-to-hand combat, he's winning.
• The Berserker: Would you expect anything less from a man who begins to enjoy fighting werewolves and later delivers the No-Holds-Barred Beatdown of a lifetime on one?
• Blood Knight: He actually starts to enjoy the siege.
  Spoon: Know what this reminds me of? Rourke's Drift. 100 men of Harlech, making a desperate stand against 10,000 Zulu warriors. Outnumbered, surrounded, staring death in the face and not flinching for a moment. Balls of British steel.
  Joe: You're bloody loving this, aren't you?
• Defiant to the End: His last words when he's outmatched and held to a wall by two werewolves:
  "I hope I give you the shits, you fucking wimp!" [Spiteful Spit]
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: His epic performance with the flares.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: And then he fights a werewolf. With bare hands. And is winning... until a second werewolf shows up.
• Frying Pan of Doom: Uses one quite effectively in his last stand.
• Screaming Warrior: During his last stand.
• Spam Attack: Is very prone of performing a whole load of quick, vicious attacks with knives and hammers.
• Spiteful Spit: In the face of a werewolf, no less.
• Why Are You Looking at Me Like That?: When the soldiers need a diversion that's 'fast and loud' they all look at Spoon, who wasn't even listening.
  "What? You what?"
• Wrestler of Beasts: Spoon finds himself cornered by a werewolf in the kitchen and engages the beast using nothing but kitchen utensils and his own fists. At one point, Spoon actually kicks the werewolf hard enough to dislodge one of its teeth and the only reason he loses is because a second werewolf shows up.

Joe

Pvt. Joe Kirkley

Played By: Chris Robson

• The Big Guy: Cooper even refers to him as 'the big guy with the axe'.
• Danger Takes a Backseat: How the poor bastard meats his end. At least he fights it like a man.
• Defiant to the End: When he realizes a werewolf is lurking right behind him in the land rover, instead of trying to escape or freaking out, he (probably pissed beyond all reason by witnessing Terry's horrifically torturous death a minute earlier) leaps into the back at the thing screaming like a berserker.
  "I'm gonna fucking have you!"
• Obsessive Sports Fan: He absolutely loves British football, and is constantly complaining about missing the England-vs.-Germany "full-on footy war".
• Tell Me Again: He gets chided for not knowing who the platoon's opposition on the training exercise is because he was too busy sulking during the briefing, enabling Bruce and the Sarge to exposit for the audience's benefit as they remind Joe.

Terry

Pvt. Terry Milburn

Played By: Leslie Simpson

• The Baby of the Bunch: He's the softest and weakest of the soldiers, and it regularly shows, with him often needing help from his squaddies to function or get out of a tight spot.
• Genre Blindness: Standing next to an open window during a siege by wolves was a bad idea.
• Foreshadowing: Terry's capture by werewolves while standing with his back to the window shouldn't come as much of a surprise when his disregard for basic training is shown in the slapdash way he has almost the entire contents of his bergen unpacked around the campfire.
• Futile Hand Reach: When Joe finds him being eaten alive by the werewolves, he reaches out weakly for help.
• Nice Guy: He's a rather shy, but amicable individual.
• Off with His Head!: Joe sees him in the barn, still being slowly eaten. A wolf bites his head off and throws it at Joe as an insult.
• Tempting Fate: Standing by an open window and proudly calling the wolves 'pussies'. He's torn through the window, dragged off and devoured.

Bruce

Corp. Bruce Campbell

Played By: Thomas Lockyer

• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: By a sharp tree branch which he runs headlong into.
• Made of Plasticine: He had to have been running incredibly fast to get impaled to the extent that he did.
• Mauve Shirt: He's the first to be killed by the werewolves.
• Warrior Poet: He has some shades of this.
  Cooper: Go on then Bruce, what scares you?
  Bruce: The self-destructive nature of the human condition.

Sam

Sam

• The Cutie: Friendly, mild-mannered Border Collie.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: A werewolf, having butchered Spoon, stoops to peer menacingly at Sam, who stares right back.
  Sam: ...WOOF.
• Innocently Insensitive: Playfully tugs at a strip of the bandage currently dressing Sarge's exposed intestines.

Werewolves

• An Arm and a Leg: Technically averted, except for with Megan. Although Cooper hacks off a werewolf's arm with the sword in the house, no one-armed werewolf is seen again in the film.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: They're heavily implied to have shades of this. Megan, who was forcibly adopted into the family after they infected her with lycanthropy and apparently resents it, describes them as a "fucked-up family" during the Motive Rant. In their human forms, the werewolf pack are actually the Uath family, who have lived in the remote Highlands glen's humble cottage for generations, and who are apparently aware of the murders they commit when transformed every full moon and hide the bodies in their house (they literally have skeletons in their closet), and they're also a Cannibal Clan even in their human forms.
• Cannibal Clan: It's implied that they're actually this in their human forms as the Uath family. Their cottage has a Cannibal Larder cellar stocked with the remains of their past victims, there are literally skeletons in the bedroom wardrobe, and in a bit of Fridge Horror the squad did mention that the stew the werewolves had left on the pot before transforming tasted oddly like pork.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: With the benefit of hindsight, it's implied that the werewolves in human form, though they're heavily implied to be a remorseless Cannibal Clan, locked their dog Sam in the cupboard specifically so he wouldn't be caught and harmed by their transformed selves during the full moon. And even when the transformed werewolves do find Sam near the movie's end, they still leave him unharmed.
• Evil Is Bigger: They are massive, each one is at least 7 feet tall.
• The Faceless: They're never seen in their human form. There are however photos of the family living in the house.
• Face–Monster Turn: The werewolves supposedly have no control of themselves in their wolf forms. Subverted, when it is revealed they have fresh and rotting human remains in multiple parts of their house. Their intelligence in wolf form is uncertain, but they know how to clean up after themselves, and store their victims as food.
• Healing Factor: Part of the werewolf package it seems. Silver can remove it.
• Implacable Man: It turns out to be justified when it's revealed the house the soldiers have holed up in is the werewolves' home in their human forms, making the soldiers invaders in their territory. Sergeant Wells lampshades this.
• It Can Think: Except for Megan, everyone initially considers the werewolves savage animals, but their behavior quickly proves them wrong. Once it's revealed that the werewolves are the Uath family who own the cottage, there are several strong hints that they retain their human forms' memories and probably even their personalities and thereby know what they're doing in their transformed state.
  Spoon: They shut down the generator!
  Terry: Why would they do that?
  Megan: Because they can see in the dark.
  Ryan: And you're afraid of it.
  • They can also use firearms as at one point a werewolf snatches a shotgun out of a soldiers hands and starts shooting back.
• Kill It with Fire: Sarge successfully kills at least three of the werewolves by creating a gas explosion.
• Kryptonite Factor: Silver, as to be expected. While it isn't fatal by itself, it does nullify their Healing Factor.
• Meaningful Name: The name of the family that owns the house is Uath. It's an Old Irish word and can be translated as "Horror" or "Fear.'' This name is fitting as the werewolves are the owners of the house.
• Nigh-Invulnerability: Due to their Healing Factor, the werewolves absorb a lot of punishment from the soldiers and keep coming.
• Our Werewolves Are Different: They physically resemble the depiction established by The Howling. While transformed, they operate like a pack and are tactical. They transform during the full moon, but can resist the transformation if they wish, though apparently not until the night's end. Silver weapons don't kill them, but they do cancel out their Nigh-Invulnerability. When not harmed by silver, they're impervious to and recover from being pumped full of lead and having their faces scalded, but can be killed with lots of fire.
• Painful Transformation: Based on Megan and especially Ryan's transformations, the werewolves' transformations are at least somewhat unpleasant-feeling. Furthermore, particularly inhuman sounds are heard before the werewolves first attack at dusk, implied to be them transforming out of their human forms.
• Sadist: After the werewolves drag Terry off, instead of killing him right away, one of the werewolves slowly eats Terry while he's still alive inside the barn. When Joe finds them some time later, the werewolf clearly notices Joe — then it proceeds to slowly bite down on Terry's neck and through his spine, and throw the severed head at Joe for him to see. Plus there's the werewolf who simply lurked behind Joe and let Joe realize on his own what was behind him, as if toying with its prey.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: It's barely ever visible in the film, but they have bright, green-yellow eyes.
• Super-Persistent Predator: The squad thinks the werewolves are this, since they follow the squad to a house and spend much of the evening trying to get them. The squad realizes that with all the fighting and trouble they are giving the werewolves, anyone else would have abandoned the house. The fact the werewolves are so persistent leads them to conclude the werewolves are the owners of the house the squad has barricaded themselves in.
• Two Girls to a Team: If we are to believe Megan and the photo, then two of the five werewolves are women.
• Vader Breath: This is what alerts Joe that there's a werewolf right behind him. The three who enter the house during the movie's final act also do this when they first appear behind Megan.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Silver can disable their Healing Factor and render them killable by normal means.
• Whoosh in Front of the Camera: A werewolf in complete silhouette whooshes in front of the camera when Bruce is being stalked in the woods.