You know, given how relentlessly depressing it is to think about the first World War and all that happened during and after it, all that death and destruction and the ramifications it would have for the world for a hundred years, sometimes you just need something schlocky and stupid to clear your head and maybe put things in perspective. Well, good news: Leo Scherman, a one-time David Cronenberg protégé, has got you covered with Trench 11.
It's the closing days of the war. The armistice is just days away. The German line has collapsed and the Entente will soon emerge victorious. But left behind in the Argonne Forest is what's suspected to be a secret bunker, supposedly the site of germ or chemical warfare research. A small team, consisting of an ambitious British officer, a medical officer, three American troopers and a Canadian tunneller, is dispatched to find out what exactly the Germans were doing down there, and find out why they never blew the place up when they retreated. When they get there, they find that it's not exactly totally abandoned. What follows is like if David Cronenberg's legendarily uncomfortable Shivers was set in the Great War: part zombie movie, part commentary on the nature of violence and nationalism (though you'd have to dig for the latter bit.)
Schlocky as this film might be, it's a sharply paced tension-builder that never quite eases off the pressure even when there aren't parasitic worms running around in peoples' brains. And as always with movies like these, the real villain is wholly human. Scherman
makes masterful use of a limited budget — most of the film is set in
dark tunnels, which means it's very easy to just reuse the tunnels for
different shots and nobody in the audience would be the wiser. The
cast, mostly no-names (though the lead character is played by Rossif
Sutherland, son and brother of the more famous Donald and Keifer) are
all great, particularly Robert Stadlober as German mad scientist Reiner
who does a good channelling of Christoph Waltz' Hans Landa.
I
must comment on the soundtrack for avoiding the cliche orchestral
music, too common with period films like this, instead going with a
creepy electronic/ambient score by Grayson Matthews — it really adds to
the mood of the film.
While it's hardly the smartest film, it's a quality slow burn that, while not quite reaching the climactic heights of similar films, still manages to be the tense, claustrophobic nightmare it set out to be.
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