Deathwatch (2002)

Synopsis: 1915. The Western Front. One million or more Allied and German troops face each other across the scarred, cratered plains of northern Europe, thick with mud and blood, the air fetid with the suffocating stench of death and gas. Hundreds of thousands of young men are already buried in this... 1915. The Western Front. One million or more Allied and German troops face each other across the scarred, cratered plains of northern Europe, thick with mud and blood, the air fetid with the suffocating stench of death and gas. Hundreds of thousands of young men are already buried in this terrible wasteland; hundreds of thousands more will die here before the senseless slaughter ends.

It is here that one young man, only 16, much like you or I, must face his deepest fear, that he will die a coward. Private Charles Shakespeare is convulsed with terror. Death is all about him, the bodies of his closest comrades carelessly shredded by machine-gun fire. He and the last few men of Y Company are utterly lost, deep in enemy territory. Their only shelter is an abandoned German trench, a claustrophobic maze of blind corners and underground tunnels, overflowing with war dead and infested with rats. Here, exhausted and terrified, they seek refuge, waiting to be rescued.

But no-one will come to rescue them. And, one by one, the young men of Y Company begin to die. Others, driven quite mad, turn on each other.

Yet what is this horror they face? Is the soil possessed by something even more terrible than the war that surrounds them, something ancient and unholy? Have centuries of bloodshed have infected the very earth? Is the trench itself alive?

In this cursed, lonely place, Private Charles Shakespeare must overcome a terror greater even than his own deepest fear, a terror beyond all human understanding. [More]