Studio: Shudder
Director: Roberto Zazzara
Writer: Davide Orsini, Roberto Zazzara, Francesca Forristal, KT Roberts, Manuela Cacciamani
Producer: Jad Ben Ammar, Leo Maidenberg
Stars: Gaia Weiss, Mark Ryder, Makita Samba, Tudor Istodor, Amina Ben-Smail, Felice Jankell, Serena de Ferrari, Lorenzo Richelmy
Review Score:
Summary:
Participants in a live-action RPG become trapped in an underground bunker where they are haunted by a paranormal presence.
Review:
LARP, as “The Bunker Game’s” opening text explains for anyone who doesn’t already know, stands for “Live-Action Role-Playing.” These immersive experiences can be similar to an escape room in many respects, or thought of like a tabletop fantasy game, except with human beings and detailed locations instead of painted miniatures and hand-drawn maps.
As you can tell by the title, this particular set of LARPers plays their game in a subterranean German shelter that’s been abandoned since WWII. The imaginary premise for their game is a doozy too. Situated in a mountainous valley dedicated to an ancient god of the underworld, Mussolini began building the bunker in 1937. In this alternate timeline, Germany won the war in 1944. A decade later however, American forces dropped a nuclear bomb that turned the outside world into a toxic wasteland. Now these make-believe Nazis pretend to live a Snowpiercer-like life underground where they perform secret eugenics experiments, plan rebellious acts of sabotage, and play soldiers and spies in an elaborately plotted conflict.
Almost as much drama exists behind the scenes among the movie’s eclectic characters. Laura recently learned she’s pregnant. It’s bad that the baby complicates her dream of making it big in New York City. It’s worse that her baby belongs to Greg, the mastermind behind the game who has been abusive and unfaithful to Laura, although they’re both stubbornly committed to making their complicated relationship work.
Laura’s devotion to a dickhead doesn’t sit right with Harry, Laura’s cousin who came along for a first-time LARP because he secretly crushes on Laura. That appears to be the gist anyway. “ The Bunker Game” never conclusively confirms that Harry lusts after Laura, nor does it seem to take a stance on whether kissing cousins should be considered creepy or not.
That’s the appealingly weird thing about “The Bunker Game.” Not the incestuous insinuation part, but the fact that everything about the film feels peculiarly foreign in flavor even though it’s in English.
For starters, authentic LARPers don’t look like this motley melting pot of people. I don’t mean to paint with a prejudicial brush that stereotypes LARPers as overweight comic book nerds with neck beards and sweat-stained costumes. But I’d bet dollars to dachshunds none of these actors have spent a minute LARPing in real life. They’re all fit, attractive, and sport fashionable hairstyles and exotic international flair. Not that actual LARPers don’t have these qualities as well. It’s just that this grim group seems to have stepped straight out of their talent agency’s headshots. They’re runway ready, not ready to roll around with a bunch of cheerful dorks in a dank cavern.
Curiously though, performers playing against type become part of the movie’s kooky initial texture. Since they’re playing people pretending to be fictional game characters, there’s an intentional degree of overacting in each role. On top of that, behavior grows more bizarre because everyone takes the game so seriously that nearly none of them break character except in private soap opera moments regarding Laura’s romantic interests. So “The Bunker Game” develops an unusual atmosphere where earnest, interpersonal melodrama collides with over-commitment to what’s essentially a theater production for an overall feeling favorably described as intriguingly strange.
In one moment, you might watch a fake doctor clandestinely steal blue liquid from a lab and be brought to mob justice in a scene with all the sincerity of an average episode of “Creepshow.” In the next moment, you might see a non-binary Nazi lament how the man playing a German chancellor abuses his role to excuse denigration of her gender identity. I’ve already used this adjective, but I’ll say again that “The Bunker Game” creates a “kooky” air that’s somewhere in the neighborhood of a classic Full Moon feature in production quality, but also in terms of an unbalanced tone you’re not sure how to take, even though that oddness can be amusingly entertaining.
It’s also fun how “The Bunker Game” puts a number of diverse dynamics in play. In addition to someone with they/them pronouns, there’s a Black man in a wheelchair whose ethnicity and disability pose two more colossal conundrums when dealing with Nazis. Too bad “The Bunker Game” takes a turn into a milquetoast paranormal mystery where everything that’s ripe for originality instantaneously shrivels and dies on the vine.
After setting up a cool shell story driven by post-apocalyptic mythology, then filling up the center with all kinds of conflicts, “The Bunker Game” ignores everything unique about it and settles for being a simple “everyone split up and die” spookshow. The screenplay came from four folks credited as two pairings of two writers. I wonder if one of those teams took the first half and the other took the second because “The Bunker Game” plays like two totally different films. The movie starts with a collection of individually identifiable characters, a backdrop for a goofy game based on outlandish alternate history fan fiction, and questionable Nazi connections that include a German officer’s murdered mistress possibly haunting the bunker’s halls. The film finishes with everyone other than Laura becoming entirely interchangeable, their personal arcs abandoned to have no appreciable impact at all, and a main story that’s reduced to a slow search for one missing man.
I can’t even fathom how certain plot points were conceived. At one point, one woman takes a break from being trapped in the tunnel by opening a can of food and finding writhing maggots inside. Laura then refreshes herself by stopping for a spontaneous shower. A nipple flashes for a moment, but the scene isn’t presented to be titillating, so there doesn’t seem to be a T&A box being ticked. That leaves the question then, why is anyone doing these things? People are being brutally murdered, apparently by a ghost, and they’re all lost underground with no outside communication. Yet someone suddenly needs a quick rinse or a bite of canned beans?
On the basis of its off-kilter aura and loony LARP framework, the first 45 minutes had “The Bunker Game” cruising comfortably toward a 60/100 score, with room to hit 70 or higher depending on where it went. Where it went was into a follow-up 45 minutes of flat action and basic beats built around boringly exploring dark corridors. I thought about averaging out the final score to 50, but decided to tick it down into the red due to the disappointing denouement. At best, “The Bunker Game” might be considered a decent thriller among mid to low-level horror titles. At worst, it’s a film that foolishly punts away its most interesting aspects for unknown reasons only the filmmakers could explain.
Review Score: 45
At least the movie only runs 70 minutes, though I suppose that extra 10 technically disqualifies it from being a literal amateur hour.