Review of Outpost (2008) by Gimly M — 25 Nov 2013

Though not exactly a "Nazi Zombie" movie, it's still a "Nazi Undead" movie, so that counts for something. When a band of motley mercenaries go on a low-paid recon mission to war-raved Easter Europe supposedly to check out mineral supplies, they find themselves betrayed and left for dead being picked off one-by-one while fighting against an unknowable enemy.

The film's cast is absolutely fucking stellar. Mixing a couple of well knowns with relatively unheard names, the cast is small, but incredible. My favourite actor ever Ray Stevenson (Rome, King Arthur, Thor, Punisher: War Zone, The Book of Eli) plays Ex-British Royal Marine Warrant Officer and Mercenary Commander D.C. along side, U.S. Marine Prior (Richard Brake - Rob Zombie's Halloween II, Hannibal Rising, Doom, Batman Begins, Death Machine), Scottish French Foreign Legionnaire Jordan (Paul Blair - Book of Blood, Taggart, Cracked), Russian Alpha Group Soldier Taktarov (Brett Fancy - EastEnders, The Bill, Silent Witness, Hustle, Jonathan Creek, The Pale Horse), Belgian Peacekeeper Cotter (Enoch Frost - The Bill, Rome), Yugoslav Military Soldier Voyteche (Julian Rivett - The Bill, Rome, Spooks) and Ex-IRA Guerilla and British Paratrooper McKay (Michael Smiley - Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, Burke & Hare, WIre in the Blood, Hustle) are hired by Hunt (Julian Wadham - The English Patient, Exorcist: The Beginning, Taggart, Hitler: The Rise of Evil, The Madness of King George, The Trial of Lord Lucian).

Outpost is an interesting mix of Horror, Action, Sci-Fi and War films, with just a little bit of humour and actual science thrown in for good measure. I quite often like throwing Nazis in for good measure, and this is a perfect example of it. Plenty of people will say that the first hour of the film could've been dropped in favour of a couple of minutes of exposition-laiden dialogue and some more explosions, but fuck those people! Set-up is everything, and the more screen time we can have of Ray Stevenson doing his stuff the better. Admittedly for such a long first and second act we didn't really find out a whole lot, but at least in this example I found it actually just added to the realism.

In essence the film is creepy. It wasn't one of the five films ever made to have actually scared me, but there is an overtone of eeriness for the whole movie, and a couple of moments with suspense or shock to rival the best. It's not all heavy on the gore, it more focuses on making its very few deaths harrowing, a number of them even appearing off screen. Finding an excuse to put Die Glocke in a movie is also instant points as far as I'm concerned. Outpost also serves in part as social commentary, which I always enjoy. Without giving too much away, I also like films that are really fucking depressing, so to me, Outpost works wonders.

84%.

-Gimly.