A British Army training exercise led by a crusty sarge (Sean Pertwee) stumbles onto a Special Forces mission that is hunting werewolves (be vewy, vewy quiet …) in the Scottish Highlands. The unit is rescued by a local zoologist (Emma Cleasby) who is apparently studying the beasts. The humans hole up together in a farmhouse while the lycanthropes try to break inside.

Written and directed by Neil Marshall, the movie functions as a demo reel the same way Guy Ritchie’s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels did. While American made knockoffs of Hollywood hits generate little or no enthusiasm, European knockoffs of Hollywood hits are usually given a pass and sometimes, actually considered novel.

While Marshall certainly proves to studio execs watching that he can make a movie, Dog Soldiers is an absurd soup of every big sci-fi, horror movie or thriller to come out of Hollywood in the last 20 years. It actually makes Cabin Fever look like a coherent narrative.

We have weekend warriors on a training mission gone bad, just like Southern Comfort. We have werewolves in the moors like An American Werewolf In London. We have the cover-up motif of Alien. We have the siege storyline of Aliens. We have the Guy We Can’t Trust from Aliens as well. Except, you know, with werewolves. Werewolves that even for a no budget film are some of the cheapest, most laughable creatures in the history of cinema.

The werewolf makeup is revealed to be professionally designed when we actually get a moment to look at it in close-up, but most of Marshall’s staging resembles little more than stuntmen running around with masks on. Student films aren’t usually as hapless as this.

If the story had stayed on the Scottish moors, it would have been worth a rental. The opening sequence, in which a pair of campers have their tent visited by a werewolf, is well done. There’s also a scare early on involving a mutilated cow falling from the sky and onto the unit’s fire.

Marshall’s decision to channel James Cameron in a protracted siege punts the film into the shithouse. Why are the troops blasting away at two or three werewolves when their bullets have no effect? And where’s all their ammo coming from? The introduction of some black comedy here – possibly leftover styling from Joe Dante’s classic The Howling – left me searching for the movies this one didn’t blatantly rip off.