Deathwatch (2002)
Of all the films that show the horrors of the Great War this is the one that sums it up best for me. It's story of a British platoon that hole up in a German bunker, deserted apart from the bodies of German soldiers strewn about the rat infested trench, deep holes beginning to fill up very quickly with incessant rain.
It really is a grim film, the narrative is almost secondary to the thick atmosphere of dread the young soldiers find themselves unable to escape from. There's a pervading sense of paranoia throughout as well as sporadic violence and horror that really goes for the jugular. One or two scenes even remind me of Soavi's The Church - I think it's the huge pile of German bodies in the middle of the trench which resembles an altar and is very Argento like when it begins eerily writhing. Deathwatch isn't the best modern horror film about, far from it, but i'm tempted to say it's the best example of a horror film set during either the first or second World Wars.
|