Monster of the Day 2005

Updated on September 18, 2019 By Ken Begg 16 Comments

Man, looking at the horror films for the early 2000s is depressing. All sequels and remakes (and seldom good ones–The Fog, blech). I guess I’ll go with Wes Craven’s Cursed, although it didn’t go very well and nobody remembers it and it features (apparently) CGI werewolves. As a rule, those have not been successful. Considering how beloved the practical werewolves were in The Howling and American Werewolf in London, you’d think they’d stick with that, but apparently not.

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  • Acethepug

    How about Dog Soldiers from 2002? Practical effect werewolves (the stilts they used for the legs on these lean, lanky, really freaking tall werewolves were really cool, IMHO) and one of my favorite “modern” werewolf movies, albeit not US-produced. If you haven’t seen it, I think you will like it.

  • Beckoning Chasm

    This is one of those films that shows up in all those “8 [or whatever] Movie Horror Collection!” things. The only thing I remember was that Judy Greer was funny, but then she pretty much always is.

  • The Rev.

    Dog Soldiers is, as far as I can tell, recognized as one of the better werewolf movies out there by most people. I know I think it’s pretty damn great.

  • Gamera977

    Yeah, ‘Dog Soldiers’ is pretty close to ‘The Howling’ as my favorite werewolf film.

  • Gamera977

    I hope the CGI werewolves in the movie look better, the one in the still above looks pretty awful.

  • That werewolf looks entirely too huggable.

  • Eric Hinkle

    I mostly remember this movie for the awful subplot where one kid is a vicious bully to everyone until he gets called ‘gay’ by the younger brother of the main girl. Then it turns out that he is gay and now he’s all happy and good and wants to have sex with the kid instead. I knew some kids at my high school who were both gay and the school bullies (as well as the biggest jocks on the football team) so that was a very sore spot for me.

    That aside it was not much of a movie. Pity Craven couldn’t do here what he did with ‘Nightmare’ or the original ‘Hills Have Eyes’.

  • zombiewhacker

    One of the things I liked about Dog Soldiers (and frankly took me by surprise) was that the protagonists didn’t do stupid things to get themselves killed, like constantly wandering off by themselves, or indulging in reckless false heroics, or getting caught conveniently off-guard at the worst possible time.

    Instead, after the werewolves draw first blood, our heroes regroup, then formulate a battle plan, and actually stick to the plan… you know, like actual soldiers! How many SyFy Soldiers-Versus-Monster-In-The-Jungle movies can you think of where most of the characters get killed off simply because they’re a bunch of clueless idiots? Pretty much all of them, I’d venture.

  • The Rev.

    Yeah, when your protagonists aren’t acting like utter buffoons, it actually raises the tension when these smart, rational people are still clearly outmatched by their foe. You’d think it’d be a simple thing, but man, how rare is it to see? Even something like Alien has people acting like morons.

  • Eric Hinkle

    It really is sadly rare in horror movies to see people display common sense, isn’t it?

  • Speaking of Wes Craven, I had the chance to watch his Swamp Thing (1982) this week. Has that Not-So-Jolly Green Giant made an appearance here?

  • Gamera977

    I know Ken’s at T-Fest but still I was thinking yesterday what if he showed up at the party at Area 51? Dressed in a Ro-Man costume: ‘I cannot – yet I must. How do you calculate that? At what point on the graph do “must” and “cannot” meet? Yet I must – but I cannot!’

    And then ended up with ‘Ya know, screw this’ and makes a Naruto run in full Ro-Man costume at the gate…

  • Eric Hinkle

    That would have been hilarious. Also probably fatal. A gorilla costume in the middle of the freaking Nevada Basin?

    By the way, did they get their estimated crowd of 25,000 people showing up? I hope not for the sake of the locals.

  • Gamera977

    Yeah, it had to be insanely hot. They had something like a million people claim to be going on Facebook but the last I heard somewhere between 40 and 100 folks showed up….

    Just happy no one got shot. Seemed there were six arrests, mostly from minor offences like public urination…

  • KeithB

    Actually, I was just in the area a few weeks ago. It is at an high altitude, so the temperature would not be that bad. It can be pretty darn cold at night.

  • Mike Weller

    Like in real life?