n the closing days of World War II, the ragged remnants of a German platoon flee from a forest ambush by American forces. The assault was sudden but devastating, reducing the Germans to a small handful of men who failed to get a clear look at their attackers and have no idea whether they've been facing the main force of the American army or a small but determined advance guard. Either way, they escape was a narrow one, and a fresh assault is expected within hours.
The survivors, who include the fanatical Lance Corporal Schenke (Tiernan) and the shellshocked Private Kreuzman (Marsan), make their way to a German bunker in the deep woods, all-but-abandoned, manned by the only two soldiers Hitler's retreating army considered expendable enough to leave behind: one of them the half-mad old man Mirus (Carlisle). The bunker has next to no useable ammunition, little water, and no obvious tactical value. Its one remarkable feature: a never-completed set of tunnels, now blocked off, and useless as an escape route.
Mirus (Carlisle), who has a habit of wandering the tunnels for hours without explanation, offers a warning. Centuries earlier, during the years of the Great Plague, a holy man wandered into one afflicted village and declared that the only way to stop the epidemic was to cast out those already infected. The village went mad, murdered the plague sufferers and buried them in a mass grave. The Nazis discovered the graves when they built the bunker. Now, he says, the tunnels are home to the restless dead.
He's probably mad. But the horrors of war have driven many of these desperate men to the brink of madness themselves. And when they investigate the tunnels, they find themselves caught between this supernatural manifestation that may or may not exist outside an old man's fantasies ... and their own hair-trigger paranoia.
The horrors of this war bore
No doubt about it. The synopsis makes The Bunker sound riveting. But sometimes you have the ingredients but fail to bake the pie.
The Bunker has what it needs in order to work: a simple and effective premise, with resonances that speak to its time period; a persuasively haggard cast that works hard to sell the weary desperation of soldiers at war; a couple of actors among them who actually rise above the material; a creepy set that seems perfectly authentic as the abandoned Nazi bunker it's supposed to be; production values sufficient to convey the storyline as written, without any moments that break the mood by betraying a poverty-row budget; and several well-staged set pieces that seem primed to get the pulse racing.
It should be as frightening, as it intends to be. Failing that, it should, at least, be interesting.
But sometimes you have the ingredients but fail to bake the pie, and that, unfortunately, is what happens here. Following the old man's soliloquy about the ancient slaughter of the plague victims, one waits in vain for the movie to catch on fire. Or, at the very least, to sizzle. But it never does.
It's not just that these actors, playing Germans, speak in British accents; that's a common complaint about many films involving actors who play nationalities other than their own, and when the films work, audiences are more than willing to concede the amazing disappearing language barrier as a matter of faith. Nor is it necessarily fatal to present Nazi soldiers as protagonists; that worked just fine in an excellent war movie called Stalingrad, made just a few years ago, which may be one of the great re-enactments of the horror of war. Nor is it, necessarily, a problem that the supernatural element is never seen clearly, and may exist only as a psychological red herring. The real problem is that The Bunker achieves no point where we care about these people or what's happening to them. Despite all the talent on display, and without ringing a single false note, it nevertheless still fails to gel. It seems endless at less than 90 minutes.
