Not all Nazi-zombies
I had a hell of a time trying to describe what my Substack is about. My initial reaction was to describe it as a Nazi-zombie movie blog, but I wanted to be clear that not all of these will be about WWII or zombies. Trench 11 is not a Nazi-zombie movie, it’s a WWI zombie-virus movie. See, I’ve got range.
The Trench 11 poster is so bad. I’m not going to put up a picture of it because I don’t want to look at it, but don’t be fooled by the Walmart DVD cover. Trench 11 has much to offer horror fans with reasonable expectations.
Review
Trench 11 begins with Lt Berton (played by Keifer Sutherland's brother that I didn't know existed) getting buried alive in an underground bunker. He survives, but is promptly dragged away from his time with his girlfriend and recruited to help the Allies find a hidden German bunker, Trench 11. There they encounter a sadistic German scientist who has been experimenting with, you guessed it, parasitic worms to win the war.
The opening scene is fairly intense and sets up a tone for the rest of the film that I'm not quite sure it lives up to. At times Trench 11 is very claustrophobic, but it's an atmosphere that fades as the movie goes on. It needed to lean more into the horror aspects, and less into random scenes of men talking military strategy. The gore is fairly light as far as horror movies go, but it has a couple of scenes that may make squeamish eyes avert.
Our main characters are fairly likable and the acting was surprisingly solid. The one issue I have with the characters were that there were maybe too many. I have severe face blindness when it comes to movies and a bunch of relatively similar-looking white men in dim lighting was really testing my recognition abilities. That's just me though. I can tell the cast must have had a blast filming.
The zombies were an interesting take on the idea. More of a virus than an undead creature, you could argue they weren't zombies at all. Trench 11 reminded me a lot of the book The Troop by Nick Cutter. The Troop follows a boy scout troop that finds themselves on a remote island battling against similarly wormy situations. While I can't recommend many of the Nick Cutter books I've read (that's a whole other conversation), The Troop is a book that has not left my brain since I read it. Use caution because while Trench 11 may be fairly tame in gore and body horror, The Troop is not.
My main criticism of Trench 11 is the lack of worms. I don't particularly enjoy the idea of parasitic worms, but it's a unique aspect of the film that feels underutilized. They could have thrown some more in and I genuinely think that would have improved the viewing experience.
What, no extra tangents?
Honestly, I'm talking about Trench 11 this week because I knew it would be a brief discussion. It's a decent movie that probably won't stay with you past the runtime, but like all war horror movies, I appreciate it immensely and wanted to give it time in the sun.
The day this post comes out I'll have moved to a whole new city for a whole new job. I don't know a single person here and I have never lived outside the city where I was born (besides my time in college, and even then that was still in the same state). I have not moved very far from where I'm from, only 2 hours away, but it's shocking all the same. Between packing and panicking, life has left little time for niche little rants like these posts. However, the horrors of zombies are sometimes a great distraction from the horrors of life.
Hopefully, my time in a new city will be better than Lt. Berton's (and worm-free).
Overall
Trench 11 is hidden gem material, and I would recommend it. It will not blow you away, but I can almost guarantee you’ll say “Oh, that was better than I thought it would be.” What more can a girl want?
Bonus
Double-feature ideas without worms:
[REC] (2007)
Ghost Ship (2002)
28 Days Later (2002)