Why so much hype?

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

A troop of British soldiers lost in battle seize an enemy trench, but their survival is threatened by its ghastly mysteries ...Good concept - basically the writer/director has converted the legend of The Marie Celeste to the killing fields of WWI, and let loose the psychology that we've built up around that conflict. Or you could think in terms of Dead Calm, maybe even Aliens or 2001. Gasp! From the opening battle sequence it's clear there was money behind this production, but it didn't carry the impact of the over-the-top finale to Blackadder, so I could have done without all the Boom-Boom-Boom in favour of just slipping into the claustrophobic trek through the mist.The star of the film is the trench - I got the sense of it as a deadly command centre turning its hostile attention inward. But the mythos of the story is confused, juggling the paranormal and the psychological, with a twist that is telegraphed early on and a conclusion that has it both ways.The performances are OK, but the actors have to struggle with cut 'n paste dialogue and characterisation, although the hero does come through well in the climax. I loved the rotting corpse gore. Music was ham-fisted, trying to distract from a lack of heart in the story.Overall: Great setting, but tangles itself in barbed wire.

My only gripe about this film is that it is a trench combat film, yet nobody had or used a spade. I would have liked to have seen that. But other than that this film is very well done. The way it starts off, it could have been a solid WW1 film. The actors are brilliant and the director does a great job of showing how nasty the trenches are, with rats, mud, constant rain, dead bodies, and such. The film is intense, it was tiresome to watch, and I just kept thinking how tired and frustrated these soldiers must be. The acting, the characters, the location (trench), the filming it drew me in. Now let's talk about the supernatural element, reminds me a bit of Jacob's Ladder and Event Horizon put together. Those two films are usually spoken highly of, so I'm saying this as a compliment that it has elements of both of those films put together and executed successfully. Also the ending is kind of like Ghostship, someone on here said it was death, I kept saying to myself Hades, so yeah, there is an ongoing cycle which makes the story a little bit clever. Special effects reminds me of Hellraiser 2 although not as intensive, and also along the lines of Evil Dead, anyway I'll take this over the CGI mess you frequently see today. To me the budget of this film didn't seem low, if I had seen this in the theater I would have been satisfied. The WW1 aspect of the film was good enough to stand alone as a pure WW1 flick IMO, and the undead barbwire guys looked really awesome, too bad we only get to see them once. The supernatural aspect of the story to me is well done too and it makes sense to me. I was pleasantly surprised!

World War II is the 20th-century event that has gotten probably more attention than any other, but World War I was also really important, especially since it created the conditions that led to WWII. Michael J. Bassett's "Deathwatch" uses WWI as the setting for the story of a British platoon that seizes a German trench, only to find that it is inhabited by a mysterious, sinister force.The movie is not about gore and special effects -- though there is some of each -- but more about the effect that the horrific experience has on the soldiers. It's almost a metaphor for the insane impact that war will have on any person. Much like how the soldiers are almost like different people by the end, a person who lives through war will almost certainly not be the same person as before.Anyway, the movie is worth seeing. Just be careful the next time that you find a trench. Starring Jamie Bell (the title character in "Billy Elliott", and soon to appear as Tintin), Andy Serkis (Gollum in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, and soon to appear as Capt. Haddock) and Hugo Speer (Guy in "The Full Monty").

Deathwatch is written and directed by Michael J. Bassett and stars Jamie Bell, Laurence Fox, Andy Serkis, Kris Marshall & Rúaidhrí Conroy.Members of Y Company go over the top and get separated from the rest of their regiment. Capturing a German trench, the lads think they have found the ideal place to dig in and keep safe. They reckon wrong as something evil dwells within.With this coming a year after John Carpenter rip off The Bunker (Rob Green), it feels like the "men in trenches" horror film should be left alone. For this is another tepid piece, hamstrung by an unimaginative script and bogged down by uneventful passages of play masquerading as atmospheric build up. Perhaps more galling is the waste of a good British cast. Bell wasn't ready for this type of film, his first after the marvellous Billy Elliot, asking him to lead off a piece full of one dimensional characters really isn't fair. There's some value in Fox's posh Capitano performance, whilst Serkis goes enjoyably OTT as a mentalist, but other than the brilliant set design there's little to cheer here.Wasted potential of premise and cast makes this a roundly disappointing effort. 3/10