YMMV / Dog Soldiers

• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • If you take the Word of God that the werewolves can resist the transformation, this throws Megan into a new light. She appeared to be resisting for as long as possible, so was her eventual transformation a form of Stockholm Syndrome? Or was she going Then Let Me Be Evil, realising the soldiers had no chance against the werewolves? Or was it a form of Suicide by Cop? If the latter, this would also explain her little speech and apology - preparing the soldiers for her transformation so they'd be able to kill her.
  • Did Terry deliberately vomit on Ryan's head to stop him from shooting Sam the dog?
• Canon Fodder: The sequence where Megan cuts her hand on a pane of glass has been hotly debated on forums as to what it really means. Word of God is that it was meant to foreshadow a plot point for a planned sequel.
• Catharsis Factor: Spoon unleashing everything he's got once he's alone with a werewolf in the kitchen. After all they've done throughout the film - including the cruel deaths they inflicted on Joe and Terry - it is unbelievably satisfying to see Spoon kick one of its teeth right out of its mouth. While he dies soon afterwards, it's a beloved scene for these reasons.
• Complete Monster: Captain Richard Ryan is the icy head of special ops who shows himself to be a remorseless, cold-hearted man when he orders Private Cooper to shoot a dog to prove himself, shooting it himself when Cooper refuses. Later using Cooper's squad as bait to have them killed by a werewolf in the Scottish Highlands, Ryan instead finds his own squad massacred. Concealing his own bite, Ryan later transforms and attempts to slaughter Cooper's team before returning to attempt to kill Cooper as painfully as he can.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • Sam the dog making off with the bandage holding Sarge's intestines in. It should be disgusting (and it kind of is) but it's also Bloody Hilarious.
  • And there's the human bones Cooper and Sarge find in the house's wardrobe. Cooper's response to seeing them sums it up pretty well, since this is the first time we see solid evidence that the werewolves when in human form were hiding their victims' corpses around their home, but it's also really hilarious because, the allegedly-kind family who are secretly murderous werewolves literally have skeletons in the closet.
• Cult Classic: The film was a financial success but only got a limited release in America, going straight to the Sci-Fi Channel after a week. These days however, it's become quite the cult favorite.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Neil Marshall anticipated Spoon becoming this. He was originally going to have a more gruesome death, but they soon realised it might be too much for the audience. Sure enough, he's probably the favorite character in the film. His Pre-Mortem One-Liner "I hope I give you the shits, you fucking wimp" is frequently quoted.
  • Pv.t Joe "I'll fuckin' have ye" Kirkley is equally well-loved. His Skewed Priorities of constantly worrying about the football results endears him to many.
• Fan Fic Fuel: Megan was living with the Uath family for at least a year, apparently trapped and unable to leave. How she ended up turned instead of just eaten, whether she tried to escape beforehand or her feelings towards the family are all ripe for interpretation.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The continued development hell for the sequel, considering Neil Marshall's other famous horror film The Descent got one - and it was met with Sequelitis reactions.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Sean Pertwee in charge of a guy named Bruce is funny now.
  • The climax involving the house being blown up is amusing to Game of Thrones fans and Liam Cunningham's role in The Battle of Blackwater. He survives the explosion both times. In addition, Neil Marshall also directed Blackwater.
  • And Cunningham playing Armchair Military is extremely hilarious not just with his role as Ser Davos, but the amount of other times he's played the everyman soldier figure. He even does so in Neil Marshall's Centurion.
  • Neil Marshall's next horror film was The Descent, and a Gender Flip version of this; with an all-female cast fighting monsters and a blonde Scottish character as the protagonist.
• Ho Yay: Cooper and Sgt Wells naturally. The latter gets a drunken scene where he declares that "I love you", and Megan jokes about leaving them alone.
• Iron Woobie: Megan if you think about it. She's been an unwilling part of the werewolf family for two years, implied to have been trapped with no way to leave. She latches onto the soldiers in the hopes they'll be able to save her, but has to watch them die one by one, and her chances of escaping with them.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Sgt Wells is one of the favorite characters in the whole film. And while Sean Pertwee is billed first, so he doesn't quite qualify for Ensemble Dark Horse status, a lot of viewers tune in for the appeal of seeing Alfred take on werewolves.
• Love to Hate: Liam Cunningham leans into Evil Is Petty to make Ryan a magnificent Troll, and a very satisfying Hate Sink.
• Memetic Mutation: "Sausages!"^note Sarge's reaction to watching his own intestines spilling from his torn apart gut
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • See Ryan's Establishing Character Moment.
  • Let's not even talk about the family of sentient werewolves' habits and Terry's death.
• Narm: The trailer's attempts at selling Megan as the lead Action Girl by asking viewers which one of the group the audience thought would crack first, and then accusatorily saying "did you choose the woman?" and "don't be so sexist".
• Narm Charm:
  • Bruce's death is almost far too implausible to take seriously - somehow impaling himself by running right into a tree branch. But it's still suitably horrifying and the subsequent werewolf attack is really effective.
  • The "there is no Spoon" line should be extremely ridiculous, and date the movie with a Shout-Out to The Matrix. But it confirms the death of a much beloved character and can't be anything but heartbreaking.
• Nausea Fuel:
  • Sarge gets his stomach clawed open, and his intestines fall out, requiring them to be glued back together. But before that happens, Sam the dog has to nearly make off with some of his bandages. It was originally going to be even worse - Sam was going to tug on one of the intestines!
  • Terry vomits right on top of Captain Ryan's head, which is quite unpleasant for emetophobes.
  • The aftermath of Joe's death, in which a river of blood spills out of the car door.
• Older Than They Think: As awesome as it was that Spoon was able to fight with a werewolf hand-to-hand without the use of any silver-based weapon, Dog Soldiers wasn't the first film to feature a Badass Normal human who was able to take on a werewolf with nothing but his wits and fighting skills. The 1996 film Were Wolf 1996 actually featured a random Badass Bystander who was able to go toe-to-toe with a werewolf using nothing but his martial arts abilities and put up a decent fight, though he still didn't win in the end.
• Out of the Ghetto: Neil Marshall was surprised to find out that the movie resonated with American audiences, who understood the British humor and had no problem with the non-RP accents (by contrast, The Full Monty required subtitles).
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Game of Thrones fans might now recognise Captain Ryan^note Inverted. he and Sean Pertwee were the only known actors in the entire cast.
  • Kevin McKidd as the lead seems much more obvious now than in 2002. Justified, since it was the role that put him in the spotlight.
  • Looks like Alfred wasn't kidding about how tough he had to be in the British military. Sean Pertwee was a recognisable name at the time, but obviously is even more famous nowadays.
  • To a lesser extent, Emma Cleasby, who played Megan showed up in Coronation Street as a recurring character called Sylvia Ramsden.
• Stoic Woobie: Cooper is a good soldier and more than qualified to join the Special Forces squad, but he gets failed because he won't shoot a dog for no good reason. Then he has to watch his comrades die one by one, and see his leader slowly transform into a monster. And yet he's one of the least angsty characters in the movie!
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Bruce the one corporal in the squad, one of Sgt Wells's war buddies and with potential to be a character in his own right, is the first one killed off at only thirty minutes. His death is a complete accident and isn't necessary for the plot at that point - since Sarge being attacked by a wolf could still have happened on its own. So he could have lasted longer and got a chance to demonstrate more personality.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Once The Reveal happens, Megan never gets to interact with the Uath family about how they've kept her trapped for two years. It's never examined at what point she decided to turn on them or how complicit she'd been before. Granted, they weren't the main characters but still. With Word of God that she wasn't actually killed by the headshot, it's possible this was ground that was going to be covered in sequels.
• Too Cool to Live:
  • Joe and Spoon are Badass Normals who do most of the heavy lifting with regards to fighting the werewolves, both of them sharing The Big Guy role - so it was inevitable they'd go down fighting.
  • Sgt Wells is A Father to His Men, played by perpetual darkhorse Sean Pertwee and rejoins the fight after having his intestines nearly ripped out. You know he's going down with an incredibly badass Heroic Sacrifice.
• Trapped by Mountain Lions: The backstory wherein it's revealed Megan knows Ryan and was seconded to his team, which plays into the conflict not at all and reveals nothing about Ryan that the audience didn't already know or could have guessed. It was forced in by producers, and Neil Marshall tried to delete as much as possible from the finished film, because even he felt it didn't make sense.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The towering, lightning fast lycanthropes, with their fluidly snarling, naturalistically detailed heads, are awesomely, terrifyingly believable. If you ever did happen to run into "fuckin' howling things," you might easily expect them to look like this. Sean Pertwee admits to being terrified of them when filming the scene in which the wolves close around Sarge on the bed.

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