MVD Visual: Bunker Heights (2026) - Reviewed

Images courtesy of MVD Visual

American musician and filmmaker Drew Fortier made his presence known in the music world working his way through numerous bands including Bang Tango as well as documenting their history in the film Attack of Life: The Bang Tango Movie.  After cofounding the bands ZFM and The Lucid as well as collaborating on Faith No More vocalist Chuck Mosley’s solo band as a guitarist, Fortier soon began acting in the James L. Edwards horror film Her Name Was Christa before writing, directing, editing and starring in the 2021 found-footage horror film Dwellers.  Equal parts C.H.U.D. and The Blair Witch Project, it put Fortier on the map as a new indie horror voice to follow.  Now five years later via MVD Visual’s limited two-disc Blu-ray set featuring two cuts of the film, Fortier is back with Bunker Heights, a kind of microbudget crime comedy continuation of C.H.U.D. with hints of Lloyd Kaufman and Joe Begos lurking throughout.  

 
Derek Tucker (Drew Fortier) is a cynical (and perhaps stupid) homicide detective wandering the streets of Bunker Heights a broken-down crime-laden megalopolis rife with poverty, drunks and crooked gangsters.  In this world cops don’t seem to care much about enforcing the law while a hotshot Wow Platinum type of overzealous news anchor Julia Stevenson (Hannah Fierman from V/H/S and Siren) who pushes around her cameraman David (Douglas Esper) around trying to get a story.  As a heist and holdup ensues in a bank with the mastermind’s son going rogue and getting himself incarcerated, a science-gone-awry story developing into a kind of apocalypse involving a subterranean creature that looks, well, exactly like a C.H.U.D., soon Bunker Heights saunters along as a low-budget comedy-thriller evoking many of the great tongue-in-cheek funny horrors such as The Return of the Living Dead and Tremors.

 
Featuring director James L. Edwards as a chilly unfeeling godfather type, a number of cameos from former Megadeth bassist David Ellefson who also executive produces, Vinnie Dombroski from Sponge and Violent J from Insane Clown Posse, Bunker Heights while including a bevy of horror stars (Hannah Fierman most notably) overall was a bit of a slog.  With the Blu-ray set including both the “director’s cut” running at 104 minutes and a secondary disc featuring a 121-minute extended cut and 80-minute making-of documentary, though well intentioned in theory Bunker Heights felt a little bit like no-budget insta-cult creature feature horror comedy.  In fairness it doesn’t go full-blown into tongue-in-cheek camp ala Troma Entertainment but it treads kindred waters. 

 
The soundtrack to the film isn’t much more than a recurring potion of synthwave going for an 80s retro vibe.  Gordon Cameron’s cinematography is crisp and serviceable and lighting is good with some shots evoking a creepy factor but again it leans heavily into the blue-against-red school of retro horror color timing.  Performances for the most part are fine though no one’s really taking it all that seriously to begin with.  Drew Fortier’s ‘detective’ is annoying and exasperating while Hannah Fierman’s bitchy reporter is a blonde damsel-in-distress.  That said, knowing it’s Fierman who gave us inarguably the scariest use of nudity in contemporary horror with Amateur Night in the first V/H/S film does characterize her performance in a different light.  Mostly the whole endeavor is funning around and for all of the homage to some of my favorite horror films of the 1980s didn’t feel that dissimilar from the other recently released MVD Visual horror film My Only Friend’s a Corpse. 

 
While well meaning, Bunker Heights for all intents and purposes unfortunately kind of bored me and didn’t seem to engage in the way the ornate slipcover artwork promised it would.  What looks like a beer-and-pizza insta-cult epic just sort of meanders from one scene to the next.  A regional low-budget horror flick featuring some of the industry’s most interesting faces and voices made by a musician who has dabbled in C.H.U.D. lore before, all the pieces are here for a pretty cool ensemble apocalyptic scare comedy rock-and-roll showdown.  Creature effects makeup is alright and some of the kills are interesting including some occasional goofs on Stephen King’s It lore, but some additional trimming of this into a tighter perhaps 80-minute movie or so might’ve benefitted Bunker Heights a great deal.  Maybe you’ll like it but it dragged its feet for me with overreliance on 80s synth wave.  I wish Drew Fortier the best and like his taste in horror.  But he should not be his own editor at this point.

--Andrew Kotwicki