Trench 11 Review: A shell-shocked WWI tunneller finds himself face to face with a dastardly German experiment in this entertaining horror.
Trench 11 review by Andrew Gaudion.
Trench 11 Review
The First World War is all but at an end . The German forces have been pushed back and are negotiating the means of surrender. But, they may have left something behind. Deep underground in abandoned German trenches lies the remains of an experiment gone horrible wrong. A shell-shocked Canadian tunneller (Rossif Sutherland) is tasked with leading a small group of American and English soldiers into the underground Trench known, as Trench 11, to seek out any evidence that may have been left there. Surely enough, they discover something deadly, meaning that the War for these men has merely just begun.
Trench 11 has pure pulpy concept at its heart, and it is this beating pulpy mass which keeps it afloat at the best of times when the films period setting and genre sensibilities clash. It is initially a little discordant watching a WW1 period flick through the eyes of a trashy B-movie lens. The film is clearly striving for a tonality close to something like Dead Snow, but suffers from being a little more poe-faced than the splatter filled Nazis zombies in snow flick.
Trench 11 Review
WW1 was a very different conflict to WW2, which is why it is initially difficult to get on board with a plot which has 1918 era Germans coloured in such two-dimensional means that have clearly been inspired by more generic evil Nazis’s of B-movies past. But once the film starts to dive more into pure thrills, it becomes much more entertaining. The use of practical effects is incredibly welcome, and the cast, for the most part, are very engaging, lead to some genuinely creepy scares and effective jumps to boot.
Some of the stylistic choices are questionable. The Trent Reznor-esque score is a little jarring at times, and the digital cinematography does betray the setting. But it is also capable of being cold and effective, playing with barren snow-scapes very well, as well as proving effective at letting claustrophobia set in once we enter the tunnels. A fun, if uneven, War horror flick that has some satisfyingly nasty tricks up its sleeve.
Trench 11 review by Andrew Gaudion, October 2017.
Trench 11 is currently playing as part of the Grimmfest programme.
