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 s further proof of the sad state of horror films nowadays,
I give you the British movie "Deathwatch" and the recently reviewed
Spanish/U.S. collaboration "Darkness".
Two films, made by very competent directors using super slick visuals, a big
budget, a competent cast, and from their own screenplay. And yet both films are
as scary as watching cats walk around my apartment complex. Which is to say I
didn't feel a single chill throughout the whole movie.
"Deathwatch" succeeds a bit more than "Darkness"
because it has a simple premise -- World War I British soldiers get stuck in a
trench occupied by an evil force -- and offers no more than that. The build up
is fast and the characters are written as so over-the-top that it's impossible
to see them as real people. And best of all, the film kept my attention, mostly
because of writer/director Michael J. Bassett's uncanny eye for detail. (I can
only say that if the real-life conditions during the shoot were as bad as it
looked onscreen, these people deserve medals for surviving the production.)
The best thing about "Deathwatch" isn't the story
or the cookie cutter characters, but the rain-drenched, blood-smeared,
covered-in-mud look of the World War I trenches. It's dirty, filthy, covered in
water, and rats run amok. There are bodies everywhere stinking up the place, and
the trench line seems to extend forever for no apparent reason. In a place like
this, at a time like this, it's easy to see how someone can go crazy from just
the sight or smell of it. Unfortunately for "Deathwatch", the
screenplay calls for a supernatural force to kill off the characters rather than
the characters' own murderous paranoia.
Unlike another British horror filmed called "The
Bunker", about German soldiers stuck in a haunted bunker during World
War II, "Deathwatch" never makes the viewer think the trench is
anything but haunted. There is no sense of paranoia or that the whole thing
might be a product of overactive imagination coupled with the realities of a
bloody war. Instead, it's clearly made known up front that the perpetrator is of
supernatural origin, and just in case we don't "get" it, CGI barbwires
come out of the ground and kills a soldier at one point.
The characters in "Deathwatch" are so forgettable
that it wasn't even worth my time to remember their names. The only character
whose name I can think of at the top of my head is lead Jamie Bell, who plays
the cowardly Charlie Shakespeare. The only reason I even remember Charlie's name
is because of his recognizable last name, and the fact that all the other
characters kept calling him by it.
The rest of the cast consists of disposable faces and
personality traits. There's the murderous psycho, who seems to be murderous and
psychotic because, well, just because. There's the inexperienced Captain, who we
all know is just waiting to "lose it." And of course no war movie would be complete
without the tough and dependable Sergeant, who is clearly the heart and soul of
the unit. Then there are these guys: the compassionate doctor, the wounded
soldier he's caring for, the foreign outsider, the carefree guy who always bites
on a bullet, the unit chaplain, and a couple of other forgettable faces thrown
in to build up the bodycount.
Horror movies like "Deathwatch", which declares
itself not to be a thoughtful "ghost story" but a bloody shocker,
lives and dies by its kill scenes. "Deathwatch" offers a couple of
nice ones, but for the most part the movie is rather weak when it comes to
knocking off its many characters. The best scene is the aforementioned sequence
with the CGI barbwire. The rest of the deaths come by way of gunshots, bayonet
impalements, and good ol fashion blunt force trauma.
"Deathwatch" is visually stunning and the
conditions of real trench life during World War I have obviously been
meticulously researched and recreated. But "Deathwatch" has no real
characters for us to root, and on top of that, these guys don't look or act like
soldiers. If anything, they look like hoodlums in uniform. Also, lead Jamie Bell
is tiresome as the nagging and cowardly Charlie, who seems to get more people
killed than he saves.
"Deathwatch" is a filthy movie and appropriately
so. It has some nice moments, but for the most part it might have worked better
as a straight War Movie. Actually, I would have loved to see a movie about the
living conditions of soldiers in World War I, known as the first major war to
extensively use trench warfare. Give "Deathwatch" some better
"soldiers" and make it about men trying to survive the
elements as well as the enemy in a rain-drenched stretch of dirt, and this would
be one terrific movie.
(See the Finnish War Movie "Winter
War" for a good movie about trench warfare.)
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