Deathwatch

If war is hell, this combat-themed chiller from debutant writer/director Michael J Bassett isn't much better. Billy Elliot's Jamie Bell plays the youngest recruit of a First World War platoon that's lost deep in enemy territory, but takes refuge in an uncharted trench where the men are systematically picked off by a seemingly supernatural assassin. There's little to set the pulse racing, apart from some ghostly noises and a few gory effects, and Bassett's lumbering direction blasts any artistry, horror or suspense clean out of the target area. It also doesn't help that you can't work out who's doing what to whom, as the uniformed actors are covered from head to foot in mud in the murky, smoke-filled trench. Frankly, it's all tedious on the western front in this bum-numbing bore.

The haunted house structure - unseen forces and trapped folk picked off in baroque ways - is transposed to a trench on... read more on Time Out