If you’ve never seen Dog Soldiers, I’m going to make you a promise:

This movie does not waste your time.

No brooding teen staring at the moon wondering if he’s misunderstood.

No tortured metaphor about identity.

No—sir or ma’am.

The pitch probably went something like this:

Soldiers. In the woods. Getting wrecked by werewolves. The end.

The werewolves look like nightmares—not brooding boys who probably worked at Abercrombie & Fitch as ab models.

Half the movie feels like a group of soldiers in a training exercise who accidentally wandered into a horror film; and are coping the best way grunts know how: dark humor, spectacularly poor choices, and fistfights with fate.

It’s basically Aliens with werewolves. Plus tea. And British accents.

Every few years Hollywood gives us another “elevated” werewolf movie where the real monster is “trauma.”

And I’m sitting here like:

Sir. Respectfully. I want to see a werewolf kick a door off its hinges and fluff up someone’s evening.

Dog Soldiers does exactly that.

If you’ve seen it, we’re friends.

If you haven’t—you should fix that.