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| The gnarly poster for Michael J. Bassett's Deathwatch |
QUICK REVIEW:
A company of English soldiers are trapped in a ghost limbo of a German trench during World War I, wherein they become increasingly mad and gun-crazed.
Writer-director Michael J. Bassett (Silent Hill: Revelation 3D (2012)) wants to make a colorful horror movie here, but he also wants to say something about some of what war destroys and corrodes, - humanity. There's no humor in Deathwatch, so the ambition is for us to taste the mud (metaphorically), be entertained and catch the anti-war message. Alright.
Unfortunately, Deathwatch is slow in getting moving, and not all of its special effects are equally sharp, - SPOILER although Andy Serkis' (Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)) death-by-barbed-wire is pretty cool. I did also miss some humor, I have to admit.
Serkis goes batshit in a believable performance, and Jamie Bell (Fantastic Four (2015)) is pleasant as a (mostly) innocent young private.
- The ugly trench war has rarely looked grosser than it does here in Deathwatch.
Watch the creepy trailer for the movie here
Box office: In excess of 2.2 mil. $
= Uncertainty
[Deathwatch was shot in Benesov in the Czech Republic. The box office figure is not a world total but the combined grosses from only 4 countries, the only ones that I can find online: the UK (1.4 mil. $), Hong Kong, Mexico and Spain. The film is a UK-German co-production, and the German gross figure isn't even known. But as it stands, it looks like a big flop.]
What do you think of Deathwatch?
And other films by Bassett, if you've seen any?
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