Eye Candy #178 - "Deathwatch"

Deathwatch: There have been several attempts to combine the war and horror genres, usually with middling results. In some cases, the set-ups are very good, but poor production values or lousy follow-through put it back into the heap. Some examples include “Outpost” (arguably the best of the bunch), “The Bunker”, and “The Keep”. “Deathwatch” falls into that same mold. A group of British tommies find themselves behind enemy lines during World War I and happen upon a German trench where the few German soldiers present are pointing their guns in the wrong direction (i.e. not at the British but at something behind them). The British kill all but one of the German soldiers and try to re-establish contact with their own lines. Very quickly, all manner of odd goings-on begin to take place, resulting in the mysterious deaths of several of the soldiers, the gruesome deaths of several others, with madness running rampant among those that remain. The youngest Charlie (Jamie Bell) has to find a way to save the remaining soldiers and himself before whatever the Germans unleashed in the trench kills him, too. Mood to spare here, it suffers from a lack of explanation – exactly what the heck is going on? We get almost sentient barb wire, ground that eats people, all manner of spookiness…but no explanation of any kind as to what said spookiness is being caused by. The only war-horror film I’m aware of that takes place in World War I, it had potential, but was scuttled by follow-through and script development. The director Michael Bassett directed the new “Solomon Kane” movie. I enjoyed the film for what it was, but I had hoped for more. Woodchuck sez, “Had high hopes. It didn’t reach them.”