Outpost (2008)

When watching horror movies, there are some that I get more excited about than others. I don’t always mind remakes, believe it or not. Sometimes sequels can be a good thing, most times they aren’t though. I love a good ghost story, I will go out of my way to catch a good one. There is also another, and much smaller, sub genre that I have started to notice, and I’m really getting into it. These deal with World War Two themed horror films. There seem to be a few out there that deal with the Nazi’s, usually in present day. With the events of this time in history fast approaching seventy years, how can the Nazi’s still be around in these films? Simple: they are, more often than not, zombies now. Like any genre, or subgenre for that matter, not all the films are good ones. Some films, like Oasis Of The Zombies, are just so bad that they are embarrassing. While a few, like The Bunker, are not half bad. When I came across Outpost, on Fearnet, I checked out what it was about, and had to watch it.

In Outpost, we meet Hunt (Julian Wadham), who is meeting with DC (Ray Stevenson) to hire him and his men. Hunt is wanting to go to an old Nazi outpost where he promises to find enough gold to go around for DC and his men.The men in question are mercs for hire. Hunt explains he needs an armed escort because there are other men that know about the gold, and are also on their way to get it. The employer that Hunt works for is willing to pay a little extra for the hired mercs, so that they can get to the gold first. This is supposed to be an easy 48 hour job, or so Hunt tells them. What he doesn’t tell them, until later, is that there is no gold. He is there to find something the Nazi’s were using to try and create a soldier that will not die. They find what they are looking for, but they also find the soldiers that were left behind. As the tag line for the movie says, “You can’t kill what’s already dead.”

I ended up liking this movie, but at the same time it turned out to be an odd one. It didn’t become a great movie to me because of the way the plot ended up being handled. It is a simple plot in truth, but Rae Brunton managed to make it confusing all the same. We first discover that there is a pile of bodies inside the outpost, and at least one of those bodies happens to still be alive. This guy never speaks, but we later discover who he is, thanks to an old film that is found in the outpost. His story, along with the other bodies in the pile, felt incomplete, and not needed for the overall plot of the movie. The German soldiers are something of a mix of zombie and ghost. For a while they just show up at odd times out of thin air, and disappear just as quickly. They are solid though, as bullets can make contact with them. They can seemingly enter and leave the outpost whenever they want, but stay outside of it for the most part. If they leave the general area of the outpost, we are never told about it. I am assuming that we are to believe they remain in the general area of the outpost though, but why? I never had a real problem with Hunt, or the mercs. I did start to wonder just how much ammo they ended up bringing with them though. They were going through magazines like there was no tomorrow for a while there.

Since I watched this on Fearnet, I wasn’t sure if it was going to be edited or not. It didn’t appear to be, since there were some pretty gory effects to be found. The only thing I found by watching it on Fearnet, is that they threw in some commericals about half way through the film. Anyway, the effects, while not many, are actually pretty good. A lot of gun shot wounds, and stab wounds, can be found through out the film. Perhaps the best effect was the head crushing scene. I won’t say anymore than that about it. The acting was a real surprise here. I can’t say that I have watched Ray Stevenson in anything until now. He is mostly known for his role on the HBO series Rome. He was also the newest Punisher recently, which I don’t think did very well. I felt that in Outpost, he can lead an action movie. Julian Wadham also did a very nice job with his role. You can also find Richard Brake, Paul Blair, Brett Fancy, Enoch Frost, Julian Rivett, and Michael Smiley.

Zombies and action seem to go hand-in-hand really. I mean, in most of today’s films, Outpost excluded really, we see our hero’s trying to get head shots of any kind in order to kill the zombie. You are looking at a good mix for horror and action film because of that. Even though in Outpost the zombies appear to be unstopable using guns, that doesn’t stop our group of mercs from pumping all kinds of bullets into the zombies, and to try to blow them up with land mines. You have to give them credit for at least trying, you know? Even when they realize bullets aren’t working, they still use them in order to give them some breathing room at least. There is a good mix of action and horror here, it is just too bad that the script wasn’t better than it ended up being. I’m all for letting the viewer make up their own minds as to what the film means, or what happened in the film, but sometimes it is nice if they give us a nudge in the right direction. That is something that would have been nice with Outpost.

3 out of 5 Awaiting the next Nazi zombie