Trench 11 (aka Death Trench) belongs to a genre that didn’t much exist before the 21st century – war horror. Alongside films like Overlord, Frankenstein’s Army, Ghosts of War and Dead Snow, war horror slickly insists that war isn’t horrific enough, and that what’s needed is a bit more supernatural nastiness on top. Or, seen more positively, that a light sprinkling of generic horror can shift even the bleakest offering more obviously into the box marked “entertainment”.
In war horror, ghosties, ghastlies and ghoulies will generally turn up at some point, to help fight against but usually with the Nazis (it’s often the Nazis). But here we’re in the dog days of the First World War, where Berton, a Canadian tunneller, is forcibly recruited by the Canadian/American/British top brass to help a small detail break into an abandoned underground trench system in France, where, it’s speculated, a mad German chemical-weapons genius known as The Prophet once had his laboratory.
Interesting casting here. Rossif Sutherland as Berton the tunneller. A joke is made at one point about Berton being too tall to be a tunneller. Sutherland is the son of Donald Sutherland and like his dad is tall (too tall to be a tunneller), and has a languid ease about him, though you wouldn’t pick him out of an identity parade as obvious DS spawn.
Playing The Prophet, aka German officer Reiner, is Robert Stadlober, who makes Reiner the full Nazi package – sneering, superior, unhinged – even though that’s an obvious anachronism. Austrian actor Stadlober, though, is merely following orders, his performance in keeping with the way Reiner is written by Matt Booi and director Leo Scherman, right down to declamatory speeches inveighing against the Jews. He’s very good, in a froth-mouthed, eye-rolling way, and would be even better if the film around him were set 25 years in the future.
But into the tunnels, where Scherman spins up some murky, claustrophobic visuals and racks up the paranoia as the men advance further into the unknown, led by the familiar World War One superior officer/ninny Major Jennings (Ted Atherton), his medical number two, Dr Priest (Charlie Carrick), plus the generally insubordinate Berton – a bit of Kelly’s Heroes in Rossif Sutherland’s performance here? There are other soldiers, but as various zombie-like abominations lurch out of the gloom, these are the guys in the First World War equivalent of the red Star Trek shirt.
On the other side, alongside insane Reiner, his number two, the Good German of this drama, Shaun Benson playing Kapitän Müller as a man who’s seen too much, knows that the war will soon end and has a very low regard for Reiner’s obviously out-of-control experiments.
There’s not much to see here that hasn’t been seen before, and beyond an interrogation of the question of how far men should go in obeying obviously mad orders, the interest comes from letting a shock parade of gore work its magic. Noses and eyes are bitten off, brains blown across walls, at one point Dr Priest performs a full impromptu autopsy, sawing into a dead man’s chest before winding it open with a retractor. Organs and parasitic worms add to the zombie ambience.
Perhaps the best thing about the film is that it is honest entertainment, setting out to do something and delivering. Everyone concerned seems to want to make a good film about seemingly unheroic men forced into a tight corner in a dark underground space. Thanks to Scherman’s brisk direction and refusal to be indulgent, plus practical effects used effectively, things rip along at a hell of pace. At one point I looked to see how long was left – 13 minutes – I was genuinely shocked. Down in those tunnels, time just flew by.
Trench 11 – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2024
