So is this movie about an architect being hired to build a bunker? Or is this movie about a marriage on the rocks? Or can it be about both of these narratives – and still be interesting? If only it was actually rational and real, maybe, but this is a major disappointment. It should not come as a surprise that the new Florian Zeller film titled Bunker does not actually take place in, depict, show, or really discuss the bunker concept that it’s “about.” Fine, so be it, that’s not the point. It mainly takes place inside of one big, gorgeous home in London where 2 wealthy upper class Spanish parents and their 2 kids live in while working in the city. The metaphor is extremely obvious and entirely cliche – this is their “bunker” and the narrative is supposed to be mirroring their concerns about a bunker job offer with their actual inability to understand their own fears about their own bunker home. And their marriage. Or something like that? Whatever is going on this film, it’s a complete mess & laughably bad. Florian Zeller’s Bunker is his worst film yet. It’s extremely frustrating because the premise is intriguing, but none of what occurs in this entire film is remotely realistic or rational.
Bunker is Florian Zeller’s third feature film so far following The Father and The Son. The French playwright continues to remain in his wheelhouse with another contained mostly-at-one-location film focused on just a handful of characters. Perhaps it was not conceived this way, but once they cast them, Zeller let them adapt the characters to represent them accurately: real-life Spanish acting couple Javier Bardem & Penélope Cruz co-star as the fake Spanish couple Miguel & Sofia. Married for nearly two decades, they’ve moved from Madrid to London. Miguel is sort of a famous architect; Sofia works in book publishing in the international department. Miguel is offered a top secret job which the film reveals is an opportunity to design & build a massive end-of-the-world underground bunker in Hawaii for this person. The Elon Musk/Mark Zuckerberg-esque character who wants to hire him absolutely loves his architecture work and is dead set on getting him to say yes – increasing his copious offer. Miguel & Sofia, who seem very wealthy anyway, consider whether this is something to do in conflict with their own views about the world. This also creates a bit of a fracture in their marriage, as they now have to re-assess who they are in the midst of making this decision whether to work for an uber-wealthy jerk who wants to hide out in his underground lair when (not if) society collapses.
That is the basic premise and it is a compelling concept for the times. This is based in reality – uber-wealthy jerks literally are doing this already whether we like it or not. On one hand, Zeller is specifically addressing this worry and trying to incite a conversation with this couple about their values & integrity as kind & caring human beings. However, other film critics are falling for only the marriage metaphor – it’s a representation of their struggles as a couple. Then there’s one other metaphor in here which is that this is a much grander story about wealthy people’s paranoia, how we treat “others”, social class commentary, etc. When the film begins to get ridiculous is when it introduces a neighbor character played by grizzled British man Stephen Graham. Their fancy home has a cement fence running along the outside garden. Out of nowhere, a builder knocks a hole in this fence, which the owner (Graham) later claims is because it’s his garage and he wants to convert it into a workspace with a window. “I need sunlight!” he pleas. This is when I started to roll my eyes. Zeller’s commentary is actually about the idea that we shouldn’t close off and exclude lower class people and we shouldn’t insulate ourselves within our “bunkers” (or houses or whatever), instead we should be open to allowing ourselves to visibly connect with neighbors. Yeah, yeah. Unfortunately this concept is complete BS.
First things first, there absolutely are legit privacy laws, housing restrictions, and rules about this hole-in-the-wall situation. There is no way this guy can just cut a hole in their cement fence and pretend like it’s an acceptable and normal and reasonable attempt to add a window. If the home owner’s want to put that fence there and they’re allowed to, cutting a hole in the fence literally is invasion of privacy. There’s nothing to debate. Does Zeller understand this? Nope, he wants to make his extremely cliche, blatantly generic point about “opening a window” to other people around you. Ugh. When something else happens later in the film, the point then becomes, oh hey that nosy neighbor who drilled a hole to peek into your home and lied to you might be really helpful to you when you need him. Uh huh, sure. Once again, this is complete BS. A fantasy scenario that is illogical and unrealistic in every way. Not to mention other irrational decisions the family makes. They have a very cute Russian Blue cat, but barely anyone interacts with or plays with it. For no good reason, Zeller adds another plot point into the script where the cat disappears. For 10 days it’s gone! Yet none of the 4 members of this family freak out, spend time looking for it, put up fliers, or anything. Because in this entirely illogical film, none of this is realistic and it’s all a fabricated scenario to make a cliche point.
Ugghhh… There are so other many unexplainable occurrences, nonsensical conversations, and themes that conflict with each other throughout the film. Just when you think it’s trying to say to audiences, hey don’t be paranoid about your neighbors, everything is fine, you’re being crazy! It flips that one its head & goes wait, nope, actually… It never gets back around to ever discuss the bunker concept either. Just having this uber-wealthy jerk guy on one Zoom call explain it is not a real discussion or criticism of it. Once again, too many modern filmmakers seem entirely incapable of making sense of what’s happening in the contemporary world with humanity and why it’s all breaking down. Worst of all, the film’s ultimate message is the kind of eye-roll-inducing hopecore drivel that imagines an entirely impractical “solution” to humanity’s disparity. The whole point is to repeat the idiom of “just focus on yourselves & your loved ones and stop being so freaked out about others.” But wait, isn’t the film supposed to be about us allowing our neighbors to drill a hole into the fence so they can see into our homes? Or is it about not taking that bunker job because you don’t believe in this idea? None of this is addressed, none of this is answered, and none of this even matters in the script.
To top it off, the film does feature a number of terrific performances. Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz are wonderful in this, as they always are. Working with the bad dialogue they have from the script, they punch it up a bit by allowing their natural romantic chemistry to flow by switching to Spanish when not discussing or arguing about the bunker. Stephen Graham’s performances are always enjoyable & he’s also always exciting to engage with. Zeller’s competency is in being able to make the scenery look good, and put the characters into that scenery, but of course he is good at this because he’s originally a theater director. However, that’s about it. It becomes so grating and so pathetically “I need to teach everyone a lesson!!” And that lesson is so obvious and actually NOT helpful to humanity. At all. It will not save us. Sorry. I’m not trying to be cynical, I just have to call out BS when I see it. I’m in awe at how terrible this film is, it’s not even worthy of debate. Zeller’s Bunker film deserves to be in some hidden underground bunker never to be seen or heard of again.
Alex’s Venice 2026 Rating: 3 out of 10
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