The War Below

I recently watched an absolute shambles of a WW1 film called "Forbidden Ground" from 2013. That film was made on a budget in the region of $40 million. The film spent more time up in the actors faces that you would wonder what exactly the money went towards. Then I seen this film, "The War Below", made on a very low budget of around 500,000 pounds. The set-design values, namely the trenches, looked a thousand times better, or rather, were utilised better in this film. Obviously, it is no "1917", but "The War Below" definitely stands tall and I would rank among the best WW1 productions. It would give its natural equivalent, "Beneath Hill 60", a good run at the races. Like that movie, the film follows the story of a group of civilian tunnellers arriving in the trenches of Europe during the Great War. They are tasked with digging beneath No Mans Land and planting enough explosives beneath the German trenches to destroy them and end the bloody stalemate once and for all.

Everyone deserves praise for this film but what truly stood out to me was the cinematography by Nick Cooke. There are some beautiful shot scenes of spring fields and soldiers walking through them and obviously he had a hand to play in bringing the trenches to life.