At the same time, this is a film born of the isolation, alienation and bunkered-down insanity that the world collectively experienced during the Coronavirus lockdown. For as microbiologist Dr Michele Riley (Chelsea Edmundson) finds herself living in complete solitude, suffering the guilt and anxiety of being separated from her loved ones at a time of crisis, and collaborating with colleagues whom she only ever meets over a Zoom-like communications system, a paranoid uncertainty begins to pervade everything.
What is unquestionable is that Michele is losing her mind. For she has recurring hallucinations of blood and gore, holds conversations with her absent, possibly dead father, and starts to see her co-workers not just as occasionally gaslighters or underminers, but even as demonic entities. When military commander Major Frank Lawrence and Michele’s dad Mr Riley both start talking with her simultaneously in the bunker, even uttering the same words at the same time, it is clear that Michele’s grip on reality is rapidly slipping – and the fact that these two father figures of male authority are both played by horror icons, respectively Candyman’s Tony Todd and Saw’s Tobin Bell, only adds to the sense that this woman in unraveling in the face of a pernicious patriarchy.
Yet there is a certain ambiguity attached to Michele’s madness. For it might come entirely from within, as a manifestation of her cabin fever after so many days all alone deep in the bunker, or as a symptom of her ingrained sense of inadequacy, especially when she is working with men who at best, like molecular biologist Dr Sam Ellis (Chad Michael Collins), regard her more as a sexual opportunity than an equal, or at worst, like bacteriologist Dr Finlay Barlow (Cullen Douglas), openly belittle and bully her. Yet the other explicit possibility is that Michele’s altered mental state comes entirely from without, as part of an alien invasion that uses mind control as a weapon.
Whatever the case, Michele is in a constant battle, in this hostile environment, to be true to herself, and not to let others take charge of her own, and possibility the world’s, destiny. Michele is a feminist heroine, whose otherness in a mostly male culture has her as much intersecting with as in opposition to the aliens who are also on the outside trying to find their own way in – even if ultimately she will gain the strength to trust her own instincts, to reach her own judgements, and to become a traveler on her own path, despite the army of impossible odds and obstacles lined up against her. Which is to say that Hanson’s film, co-written with Charles L. Bunce, is a confident genre piece echoing with allegorical resonance down below in its hidden depths.
The Bunker had its international première as the Trieste Science+Fiction Presentation at FrightFest 2024, 23 August
