Bunker

Bunker is horror/thriller film that clearly has a small budget. My girlfriend, one of my best friends and I all saw Bunker in a theater as part of the limited release.

We all generally liked it (we all gave it a 6/10), but agreed it could have been a lot better. We are all horror fans, and my friend and I both have degrees in World War I history.

There is a lot of good in this movie, including the acting of the lieutenant, the creature effects, the setting, and the costumes. I was really curious how that would work out, especially since there is a giant Hollywood trend to have WW1 set films (1917 and All Quiet on the Western Front come to mind, both movies I enjoyed). Needless to say, it is pretty immersive in the time period (except for a few obvious uses of green screen).

However, one aspect that really drags this film down is how inconsistent it is. For example, the acting of the main character varies from good and committed to distracting and over the top, the special effects are good (sometimes) and other times involve terrible CGI or obvious use of miniatures. The tension building is sometimes fantastic, and sometimes leads to absolutely nothing or repeats what we as an audience already know.

But the biggest problem with this film is the inconsistency of the pacing. If you've seen the trailer, there is clearly a lot of build up to the plot of this movie (they go in the Bunker and find something). I'm not against slowly paced films (I quite enjoyed some of these types of horror films, namely the Witch), but there is a giant middle portion of this movie that drags. This film is just under 2 hours, but feels easily like a 2 hour and 15 minute film.

I don't think it was worth watching in theaters, but if this film came on Shudder or Netflix, I'd give it a watch.

In my best Joe Biden voice: 'C'mon man!' It's WW1. Trench warfare. Acres of black mud. Rotting bodies. Flies.

The uniforms, the trenches, the faces, the props -- all cleaner than a mall display at Abercrombie and Fitch. Seriously, if you had A&F do a little mannequin scene in their store in a WW1 theme, it would look like this movie.

It took me right out of the movie. Little things like accurate ranks, dirty uniforms, squalid environment, would go a long, long way. Takes minutes of research.

Guess the crew just didn't care.

I think the actors and the director have potential. Maybe put a little more research into future projects.

Whew this isn't a great movie. I wouldn't waste your time.

However, what really caught my attention was one reviewers comments. They claimed that during WW1 the Americans fought with the Germans and then followed it up with this comment...."It doesn't take a genius to know a little about history." Apparently it does.

The Germans never fought with the Americans during either WW1 or WW2. They entered both wars late (1916 and 1942 respectively) but were on the side of the Allies.

I know this review has nothing to do with the actual movie but considering we now have all historical information at our fingertips via the internet, such comments just shocking.

When I stumbled upon the 2022 movie "Bunker" from writer Michael Huntsman and director Adrian Langley, I hadn't even heard about it. But seeing it was a war-based horror movie, of course I opted to watch it.

Writer Michael Huntsman failed to deliver a particularly thrilling storyline here for director Adrian Langley to bring to the screen. Sure, the concept behind "Bunker" was interesting enough, but the execution of it was just downright too monotonous, slow paced and uneventful. And that made 108 minutes seem like quite the prolonged suffering.

And it was exactly that. Because it was only the last 5 minutes of the movie that proved overly interesting. Needless to say that by then, the ship had long sailed and the movie was beyond salvation.

I wasn't familiar with the cast in the movie, but the actors virtually had nothing wholesome or solid to work with from writer Michael Huntsman.

Visually then "Bunker" was okay. It was a pretty low-key special effects movie, which in itself was okay, as the movie hardly felt like it needed an impressive array of special effects.

"Bunker" was a swing and a miss of a movie, and it is not something I would recommend you waste your time, money or effort on.

My rating of "Bunker" lands on a generous three out of ten stars.

Another low budget war-set film that failed to do its due diligence. I'm literally 4.5 mins in and already frustrated for everything else to come. When filmmakers, or more precisely storytellers, do not have direct experience in the field in which they are narrating, they have an obligation to research - and research the ass out of the subject. When they fail to do that, they fail in creating a world in which audiences can suspend their disbelief. There is simply no excuse for laziness in scene setting or character presentation especially when audiences are far more historically clued up. So, for anyone who's interested, just watch the first 4.5 mins and observe...... 1) uniforms have staybrite buttons. They should be brass. Such a small detail isn't hard to get right. Buttons of the era up to WW2 (any will do as you're unlikely to see insignia detail) are freely and widely available online. Staybrite are horrible and shout modernity.

2) Our officer, the Lieutenant interacts with a Corporal (stripes on his left arm) referring to him as 'Captain'.....twice just in case you think you misheard it.....

3) The 'Captain' offers up a salute to the Lt first - not the way its done. You salute the rank, not the man. If indeed he was a Captain the Lt would have come to a smart attention and offered up the salute to the new arrival.

It's pretty basic stuff to get right to be fair. The script is just plain awful if the actors are regurgitating what's on the page. And it's not the first film I've seen in the low budget war genre that has made this simple error..........and there's a lot more wrong here that I could labour on with. But to keep it short when you don't have much in the way of budget you have to make the most of what you do have. Be less pompous, cut the narrative back and tell a simple story well. War-set stories are ones where scrimping on accuracy simply isn't the way to best present your story and keep your audience engaged.