The Bunker Game

Just watched The Bunker Game on Shudder. Best not to read the synopsis, as I expect many folks went in not knowing much. Almost anything I say will be a spoiler. Trailer sort of gives you a hint, but I liked the twist.

Only a few likable characters, with a creepy subplot that might really bother some folks. There is Nazi imagery, I can say that much. First ten minutes set things up then you begin to understand, as things go wrong. Slow burn with things growing weirder. Odd ending you can take a couple of ways.

I gave it three out of five 💀 on the app.

This is not really a film; it is more of a video game. Unfortunately, it is not even a good video game because NOBODY CARES about any of the characters in the film. They have no character development, so we don't care about them. If they die, they will get another life, because you get three lives in video game land. In real life you get one. And it is much better not to waste part of it on this exercise in tedious competition.. The actors in the film are cartoonish, as is the script. So maybe it would have been better to make this as a cartoon rather than such a lame attempt at a real film. Don't waste your money on this turkey.

(No spoiler)The movie has SOME redeeming qualities. The beginning is semi interesting? Makes you wonder what will happen next, but that quickly devolves. It has so many weird, unnecessary plot points. The pacing is super bizarre. Each character makes you feel like they were going for a different movie with each of them.

In the end the movie got to be so boring and drawn out I would fast forward through some of the more pointless scenes. There's a weird nude scene, just because I guess? Lot of scenes that were, "meant" to add to the ambience or suspense and manages to do neither.

For the story itself it's just bad. There's no other way around it. The movie doesn't know what it's trying to say, because it ends up saying a lot of nothing. The individual stories feel super bland and pointless, while the main plot somehow manages to be worse?

It boils down to creepy horror movie trope executed HORRIBLY to the point where the movie was somehow creepier before you got to the tropey horror execution.

Then it tells you nazis are bad, and that incels are also bad. While this is true. It offers nothing extra to say for either of these.

The point they try to make about female autonomy was also done poorly in my opinion. They make the main character brave and independent, which is good. They, however undo a lot of this by making her personality revolve around a guy and having a kid.

The film did NOT know what it wanted to be. It started off as an intriguing story about LARPing that looked like it would become a mystery and/or a psychological thriller, but then it devolved into a really stupid ghost story. To top it off, there were superfluous villains to provide additional (stupid) plot twists. What an absolute WASTE of decent actors and a nice set!

Whoever was in charge of the story should be fired; this could have gone any number of interesting ways, but NOOO, it's all about messing with the audience. Either someone tried to copy aspects of various incompatible films, or committee "logic" was involved. Gad.

I give this three (3) stars. It's AT BEST an interesting failure.

I Realize this movie is only 95 minutes long but it seemed much much longer than that. The story seems so disjointed, and I really didn't get much time to care about any of the main characters. This setting for these LARPers is supposed to be haunted but the film isn't the least bit scary. The jump scares are lame, and my biggest problem is that these people are all willingly playing NAZI's in the LARP. I might not understand the whole LARPing community, but I know a bad movie when I see one.