DVD Review: Outpost
Outpost (2008)
Studio: Sony
DVD Release Date: March 11, 2008
Directed By: Steve Barker
Cast: Ray Stevenson, Julian Wadham, Richard Brake, Paul Blair, Michael Smiley
Brutal As Hell Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
Review By: Benjamin Bussey
In a hostile zone in Eastern Europe, a team of mercenaries head out into unfamiliar territory. They’ve been hired by an enigmatic businessman, who mentions in hushed tones the extreme wealth of his backers, leading the roughnecks to quietly speculate as to just what they’ve been sent out to uncover. What they find is an aged bunker; and while none of the team was exactly relaxed to begin with, once they’ve stepped inside the dark subterranean maze things get that little bit tenser, not to mention a tad more bizarre. Soon enough, the soldiers learn what their employer tried to keep them from discovering – that it’s a Nazi bunker left over from WWII, which was the site of potentially earth-shattering scientific research. And the bad news – the test subjects from all those years ago, while not exactly alive, are not exactly dead either.
Undead Nazi Stormtroopers. Now that’s a concept any action/horror filmmaker would be ecstatic to hit upon. It’s a terrific idea for a low budget movie, no doubt about it. Sadly, it’s about the only vaguely unique thing that Outpost brings to the table. Like a great many genre pieces of recent years – say, the Grindhouse movies and Neil Marshall’s Doomsday – Outpost is a movie steeped to its neck in 80’s influences, and wears said influences on its sleeve with pride, in particular Predator and Aliens. But the end result is considerably less than the sum of its parts.
It’s a real shame, because it’s not as if efforts aren’t being made. Aside from the unquestionable coolness of the concept, the casting is also by and large spot on. Ray Stevenson (Punisher: War Zone) leads the ensemble with suitable gruff, and these guys are immediately believable as soldiers: plenty of ‘falling back’ and ‘sounding off,’ and other such terminology which to my ignorant ear seems like genuine military vernacular. Anyone who’s ever watched Spaced may initially be taken aback by the presence of Michael Smiley (AKA pill-popping bike messenger Tyres), but he too gives an appropriately deadpan performance.
The blame, then, does not lie with the casting or the concept, but with the script and direction. Director Barker and writer Rae Brunton seem to be counting on the presence of real manly men and phantom Nazis to be enough. Revelling in the aforementioned Aliens and Predator influence, they go for a slow burn approach, but unlike the aforementioned movies they forget that such build up has to lead to a satisfactory pay-off. Once it’s established that the villains of the piece are to all intents and purposes impervious to any harm, the whole thing hits a dead end. The soldiers will continue to fight regardless as it’s all they know, it seems – but with very few places for them or the story to go, the whole thing comes to a rather abrupt and most unsatisfying end.
We often talk so disparagingly of ‘development hell,’ but Outpost stands testament to the fact that an extended development period is often very necessary indeed. This is something that had the potential to be a real stormer of an action/horror movie, but as it stands it does nothing but remind the viewer of other films that were great. What a sad waste of a good cast and a terrific concept.
