Review of Outpost (2008) by Graham P — 18 May 2009

Outpost is a low budget chiller featuring an all-British cast that does a good job in building up tension and suspense for about the first thirty minutes but then manages to screw the pooch a and become somewhat formulaic and tedious. A shame really, because it's obviously been made by people who are attempting to craft an atmosphic and authentic little film on limited means; but who unfortunately let themselves down when it comes to handling the details.

The premise of this film is quite similar to a 2001 British film called Deathwatch; which was set in World War One and involved a group of soldiers in a haunted bunker. Outpost is set in the modern day, in some unspecified war torn Eastern European province, and features a squad of hardened mercenaries who are paid to retrieve something from a World War Two outpost. This outpost just happens to contain a division of undead nazi SS soldiers.

Well, I say undead, but they're not really dead at all. Rather, they are the results of bizarre experimentation in intrinsic field manipulation. Or something. This means they can teleport around and not die when hit by hails of gunfire. It also means that our mercenary team are quite screwed. The extent of their enemies invincibilty is not revealed until the squad have had time to explore the outpost a bit, in all it's scary, dimly lit eeriness. The problem is that it is not clearly defined what, if any, their limitations are and also what their motivations might be.

It's like this: Zombies are good antagonists because they are limited and their motivations can be deduced quite easily. Zombies can be fought or escaped from if one keeps their wits about them and doesn't do anything really stupid (which characters in zombie movies are often prone to do). There are rules to zombies. In many ways, the nazis in Outpost act like zombies, staggering along and soaking up bullets in relentless attack. However, at other times they appear and dissapear in a flash, taking off one of the luckless mercenaries with them to kill horribly. One begins to wonder the requirement for such sneaky behaviour when none of them can die. Then one wonders why they stumble toward the besieged soldiers like mindless drones when earlier they were teleporting.

The problem then, is inconsistancy. The uber nazi stormtroopers soonn begin to feel like nothing more than a plot device, shoehorned in to the story to add horror and menace but ultimately suceeding in making the proceedings less interesting. Movie monsters should follow rules and for dramatic tension to exist there should be a sense that the heroes might make it (even if they don't). Movies like the Descent nail this perfectly, with creatures that are terrifying but have limitations and can be killed. Outpost, on the other hand, feels like horror done by the numbers.

I will say as a plus point though that the acting in this film is solid from all the cast members and I felt they portrayed the cohesion of a trained military unit rather well. The first half of the movie is also reasonably atmospheric and tense. On the whole, a somewhat dissapointing effort that is not without certain redeeming qualities.