Go into the “Bunker” and Never Come Out! Now on DVD!
Trench warfare has already been damning for allied forces held in stalemate against the German’s only yards away in their trench. When the commanding Lt. Turner discovers the German trench has been abandoned, he moves his ragtag team of British and American forces across a barbed wire and cadaver-laden no man’s land in to salvage victory for obtaining a German bunker without a firefight or loss of life. What they discover is an externally barricaded bunker and inside the vacated stronghold is a barely-breathing German soldier nailed to a cross. Incoming artillery causes a bunker cave-in, leaving two of the soldiers dead and the others trapped inside. Slowly, something insidious and omnipresent inside the bunker builds measured madness inside them, turning one-by-one the seasoned and fresh off the boat soldiers to suspect each other’s loyalty, sanity, and hope for escape, something that has been dwindling every minute with each stale breathe.
War and horror are unequivocally synonymous. The atrocities and death seen on the combat field can break a person’s psyche in a matter of an artillery shell explosion. Trauma can quickly take over as the totalitarian regime and that carnage-induced shock can never be unseen ever. The wide-speed obliteration of people and towns done in the second Great War, between the Nazi hate-war crimes and the collateral damage caused by Blitzes and tank fire, has been the foundational base for a number of appended horror films. “Men Behind the Sun,” “Outpost,” “Shockwaves,” and even “Ilsa, “She Wolf of the SS” are just a select few of the many subset horror films to be inspired by World War II. While the more contemporary “Overlord” joined the bandwagon of one of the world’s deadliest conflicts, overlooked is the first Great War as the backdrop for horror narratives. When I jog my categorial knowledge and memory of WWI horror movies, only one comes to mind, the 2002 M.J. Bassett mud and rain-soaked supernatural thriller “Death Watch” with Andy Serkis and Jamie Bell. Now, I know two with 2022’s “Bunker,” the debut feature length script written by Michael Huntsman and directed by Adrian Langley (“Butchers”). The U.S. production is spearheaded by Crossroad Productions with Buffalo FilmWorks (“A Quiet Place: Part II”) footing the costs by executive producers Lisa Gutbertlet, Andy Donovan, Jennifer O’Neill, Kevin Callahan, George Pittas and Brett Forbes (“The Collector”) with Matt Corrado (“Half Sisters”), Patrick Rizzotti (“The Collector”), Greg Wichlacz, and Michael Huntsman’s father and Blue Fox Entertainment founder, James Huntsman (“The Night Eats the World”) producing.
“Bunker” follows a group of allied soldiers unwittingly stumbling upon a supernatural dugout left behind by the enemy. The U.S. production is fitted with nearly an all-American, all-male cast with the majority playing British soldiers and while accents do justice stressing certain syllables and comes off pronouncedly brisk, the ears can detect subtleties that can make you question the actor’s national validity, such as with stage actor Patrick Moltane’s Lt. Turner. A very proper English suited from his officer rank, but the act does come off over-the-top and colorful in Lt. Turner’s pithy and lively vocabulary. “Bunker’s” principal focus is on Pvt. Segura, a Latino-American medic who has answered the call of duty and has served long in the conflict, trying to prove his worth as outsider in his own country. “Eraser: Reborn’s” Eddie Ramos helms the character’s drive as an upstanding member of his community and as a military soldier by doing his part, playing the overall even-keeled medic whose goal is to keep soldiers healthy and breathing in a time of war. “Bunker’s” subtle racism isn’t teeming and poignantly powerful, but the small band are mostly and carefully passive aggressive against Segura, except for one other private fresh off the boat, Pvt. Baker (Julian Feder, “Escape the Field”). Segura then becomes what he’s yearned for, to be a protector, something he can’t do with minds already set in their ways with the rest of the characters who are either indifferent to his presence or forthright in his face as the root of their problematic situation. Quinn Moran, Adriano Gatto, Mike Mihm (“Unsane”), Sean Cullen (“Killer Rats”), Roger Clark, and Luke Baines as the crucified Kraut make up the remaining all-male cast.
The all-male cast is crucial to the “Bunker’s” undercurrent theme which isn’t a torrent of one-after-another hits on the surface level. Under the context that soldiers universally believe in comradery, especially during wartime stuck in a trench when relying on the next man to watch your back, Pvt. Segura secretly yearns to belong, be one of the team, and blend into the uniforms of brown and tan, suited mostly for the typical late 1920s white male. Through the early acts of passive aggressiveness, the commanding officer ordering him to behave when left unattended, scolded for another private’s inability to move quietly across no man’s land, and being a person of mistrust when trapped in the German dugout, Segura ultimately is perceived as the enemy when the ungodly presence causes hallucinations, fear, and self-inflicting injury. The bunker represents a fermentation of hate and death, deep-rooted distrust through the depictures of white radicles connecting everything around them be shield by the dirt walls that forces ugliness to come to a head by way of messing with the mind. Being semi-familiar with Adrian Langley’s previous horror “Butchers,” I expected brutality, bloodshed, and groundwork that slowly flourishes as the story progresses and Langley delivers on demand with a chillingly connotative race-horror in an oppressive and melancholy World War I background. While some period and wartime elements and actualities may frazzle historical war buffs, “Bunker” has otherwise resounding production quality despite its low-fare budget, feeling very much like the horrors of trench warfare and then some.
Philadelphia based, independent film home video distributor Breaking Glass Pictures releases Adrian Langley’s “Bunker” onto DVD. The MPEG-2 encoded DVD5 is presented in a widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Honestly, the compression works well here with the color reduction, a decrease in the hue saturation, leaving behind more neutral tan, browns, and greens, to flourish as an old timey picture that harmonizes with the classic resembling opening credits where the cast and crew are listed as whole. Details are generally potent, reflecting delineating contours, coarse textures, and all the minor sweat, dirt, and blood strewn about the dugout from the Arri Alexa camera that captures confined spaces with vast depth. The English language Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound is the sole audio option and is the really only option needed for a confined, atmospheric film like this that utilizes the back and side channels with crumbling dirt walls and muffled bombardments. There’s a nice balance between the prominent dialogue and the ambient action with Andrew Morgan Smith’s punchy score that’s like a mix between Joseph LoDuca’s “Army of Darkness” and Alan Silvestri’s “The Predator,” intense, grand, and heart pounding like a classic monster movie soundtrack. There are no subtitles available on this release. Bonus features only include “Bunker’s” trailer and other Blue Fox Entertainment previews, another World War thriller “Wolves at War,” and Langley’s “Butchers.” Physical attributes include a tempered chocolate-appearing DVD case with a long ally solder entering a large and foreboding bunker with war and graveyard elements above ground. Inside, there disc art is pressed with the same image but cropped to just show the soldier entering the bunker. There is no insert included. The region 1 locked playback DVD comes not rate and has a runtime of 108 minutes. “Bunker” is slowly-seeping dread of psychotronic apathy and abiding odium that manifests creaturely out of war’s massive and overwhelming stress and death.
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