Set during WWII, The Bunker follows the grizzled remains of a retreating German platoon as they take refuge in a nearly abandoned tank bunker. Arriving at the stronghold, the only personnel the group can find are a teenage boy and his superior; a crazed old man. Preparing for the Americans to attack, the battle-hardened soldiers soon learn that they have more to fear than the enemy, namely a haunting terror that is waiting to possess them in the bowels of their fortress.

A great movie with some horribly misleading cover art, The Bunker is a combination of a war movie and a horror movie, with a definite focus on the former. The way the horror is used is subtle, with most of the chills being implied. The movie is not a rip-roaring gore fest, but a chilling meditation on the horrors of war.

The Bunker spends most of its time showing the relationships between the members of the shattered platoon, relationships that seem to run mostly hot instead of cold.

One of the things I really appreciated about this film is the delicacy and intelligence it took in portraying a group of German soldiers. Nazis have become so vilified to such an extent that a lot of movies ignore reality and go to pains to make it seem like every member of the German army was a sadistic, evil monster, passionate in their acceptance of Hitler’s genocide. This is, of course, true of many of the soldiers who fought for Germany in WWII, but not all.

In every war there are soldiers who fight simply to defend the interests of their country, the motivations or political reasoning of their cause being unimportant. Put simply, the little guy doesn’t always believe in the war he’s fighting in or the political figures that started it, he’s just trying to do his job as a soldier. In The Bunker, we get to see some of these people, people who aren’t particularly swept up in Nazi propaganda, fighting alongside with some of those who do believe in German supremacy. The clashes between these two types of soldiers are fascinating to watch, and it’s interesting to wonder just how accurate the movie is in this sense.

The film provides some satisfying gunplay and WWII action, with the opening scenes displaying the protagonists losing battle as they retreat into the safety of the bunker. If you’re looking for a lot of warfare then you might be disappointed, as The Bunker spreads out most of its violence in-between the German soldiers themselves, as they are manipulated by the supernatural presence that occupies the tunnels. This presence uses the soldiers’ differences against each other, even pushing one of the Nazi true believers to try and murder his “traitorous” comrades.

The ghostly evil that lies in the tunnels beneath the bunker is a metaphor for the horrors that are created by war-born experience. War truly is hell, and the final scenes of the film show that the true horror is caused by men, men like the German soldiers who must now try to live with themselves and their unspeakable crimes.

The Bunker, in the end, is a well made art-house film that succeeds as both a horror movie and a message about the evils wrought in conflict. The movie reminded me a lot of another work I watched a while ago, a horror film set during the First World War by the name of Death Watch. The two films are surprisingly similar, both in their stories and in the sense that they are each well made. (Vhs Caveman, 7/21/06)

Directed By: Rob Green.
Written By: Clive Dawson.

Starring: Jason Flemyng, Andrew Tiernan, Christopher Fairbank, Simon Kunz.