Bunker

Florian Zeller gave his audience an extraordinary glimpse into life with dementia in his feature debut, The Father, for which its lead, Anthony Hopkins, went on to win his second Academy Award (alongside Zeller taking home the trophy for Best Adapted Screenplay). His follow-up, The Son, premiered in Venice 2022 and unfortunately had little of its predecessor’s sophistication. Instead of adapting the third instalment (The Mother) of his trilogy of stage plays as well, the French filmmaker’s new project Bunker tackles social disease, instead of mental ailments.

Spanish architect Miguel Moreno (Javier Bardem) lives in London with his wife Sofía (Penélope Cruz), children and cat. Their dream house is situated in a gentrified neighbourhood, with the working-class fellow next door (Stephen Graham) forced to convert a garage into a habitable space. When the Brit breaches the wall that separates the two properties, a neighbourly war about privacy and rights to install windows ensues. Meanwhile, Moreno is approached with the most lucrative offer of his career: to build a survival bunker for a Silicon Valley millionaire.

The movie’s placement in Venice is impeccable, sandwiched between the festival’s screening of Alex Gibney’s four-hour documentary on Elon Musk and the release of the first teaser for Luca Guadagnino’s Artificial, which appears to feature such a bunker in the home of Sam Altman. Paul Dano may only appear in Bunker through a single Zoom call, but his portrayal of a tech bro – a fictional amalgamation of these two real-life counterparts and more like them – leaves a lasting impression. His prevailing nonchalance in the face of an impending apocalypse is the epitome of an “après moi, le déluge” ethos of making the world worse for everyone else, while possessing the means to evade consequences.

Bunker concerns itself with compelling questions about society’s growing mistrust of others, which has reached unprecedented levels in this lifetime. However, the way it goes about it is a bit clunky. The script works with blatantly apparent metaphors, such as the pyramids of Egyptian Pharaohs becoming a symbolic representation of power structures, to make its point. Zeller holds the audience’s hand through his excursion into paranoia and proverbial human walls, instead of trusting audiences to connect the dots for themselves.

Contrary to his previous work, this picture doesn’t shy away from employing humour; there are a number of scenes in which certain aspects are taken to extremes in order to highlight their absurdity. These are tied to the alarm system that is installed in the Moreno household (which now comes with fog to blind the intruders) or Miguel’s suspicion of a delivery person, which leaves him trapped in his own security chain.

The reason the family and relationship drama works, at least partially, has less to do with direction than with Cruz and Bardem’s organic intimacy, the easygoing familiarity between the two that naturally emerges from their personal history. Cruz’s character remains painfully underdeveloped, with her service to the story anchored in her role as moral authority. The side plot about her working with an American author (Patrick Schwarzenegger) does little more than drain the picture of its momentum.

Oscar-winning composer Volker Bertelmann’s score for the production was evidently inspired by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s work in Gone Girl: string instruments that become part of a hazy synthetic texture – an ambient, soothing quality that initially suggests serenity but is sapped by an undercurrent of discomfort. The seemingly idyllic soundscape seems privy to something the viewer isn’t, hinting at unease that has yet to surface. Having the daughter listen to and sing along to Billie Eilish’s When the Party’s Over is again an overly literal choice that pulls viewers out of the film rather than drawing them in.

While Bunker might strike festival critics and cinephiles as overly constructed and heavy-handed, that very directness could work in its favour with audiences who simply come looking for entertainment, and are then pleasantly surprised to be given something meaningful to take away.

Selina Sondermann

Read more reviews from our Venice Film Festival 2026 coverage here.

For further information about the event, visit the Venice Film Festival website here.