Outpost 37: l'ultime espoir

I have above average tolerance for shaky cam which comes in handy watching found footage movies, but I've just met my match in Alien Outpost. It's quite a shame since it has good prospect that could've been much more. By telling a story of alien invasion from the soldier's perspective and having more than ordinary skirmish, it starts decently until about halfway where it fails to keep the pace flowing or the camera steady.

This is the story of Outpost 37, the most dangerous outpost a soldier could be stationed in. An alien race called Heavies launched an invasion many years before, soon afterwards nations gathered and fended them off. Outposts are made to defend against their last remaining troops. The script is surprisingly very detailed, there are many aspects that other similar movies neglect to mention. Its use of military personalities, though somewhat overused, is fitting to set the tone.

The movie falls apart when it needs to excel. One of the main things about alien invasion movie is you at some point need the alien to appear. You might go for unassuming but effective design like District 9 or full blown larger than life entity. Sadly for this movie the alien is subpar, it's done with inferior CG of last decade. The design looks terrible, as though it's a reject from Mass Effect games or unused extra of Falling Skies. It has neither the technology nor make-up to convincingly deliver extraterrestrial threat.

Camera work is unfortunately just as bad. It takes a real finesse to capture warfare with precision, and it'd be much harder to create action scenes by first person view alone. The film is incredibly disastrous when action hits. It flings out of focus, screens literally lag and generally hard to follow what is actually happening. Mayhem of war should be conveyed better, not into mayhem in your screen.

Alien Outpost has the correct idea of highlighting the human aspect, but it simply doesn't have the technical production to create the intended effect.

Alien invasion movies are going to keep coming; no matter how god awful the recent stock of them have been ("Battle LA", "Battleship") it seems like there is still money that financiers still think should be thrown at blowing E.T out of the water. But if we're going to keep going down this road, it's clear that we could do much worse than the kinda-different "Alien Outpost" from writer-director Jabar Raisani. Raisani, a visual effects supervisor on quite a few mainstream projects (most recently "Game of Thrones"), gives us his first feature here, a combination of "Starship Troopers" and Sebastian Junger's war documentary "Restrepo." So the Earth gets invaded in 2021, a year later the alien Heavies have almost all been extinguished except for some stragglers who are being taken care of by military outposts around the world. 10 years later those outposts have been defunded and the men fighting the war have been forgotten. As if the real-life comparison doesn't hit you over the head enough already, a film crew has been assigned to document the efforts of Outpost 37, situated between Pakistan and Afghanistan. (That's all that area needs- Jihadist Aliens).

"Outpost's" approach is kinda cynical. Remember all those foreign kids Michael Bay has running around, celebrating when the Americans stop the Earth from getting destroyed? Well, that only has a "few-year" shelf life. The soldiers are at risk not just from aliens but also the locals, both of which likely to pull an ambush on the rocky and rough terrain. There are moments when things get intense, and there are moments when the guys just sit around/contribute to film crew interviews- bullshitting with each other, cleaning weapons, practical jokes, telling war stories, trying to add some sense to the mayhem. Despite every character being given a "bare-bones" personality, it's surprising how much a lot of this comes off as genuine, especially like in a scene where a soldier honors a fallen friend.

It's a shame that Raisani doesn't have as much confidence in his alien creations. We're either given brief glimpses or shots from far away. I want to say they resemble the Orcs from "Lord of the Rings" but I just couldn't tell. They also don't really do much besides attack during gun battles (machine, electric, laser, lot of different types of guns here), any other reason for having them inhabit this region makes about as much sense as the Sunni-Shiite conflict does to most Americans. We get a few decent battles and ideas but Raisani, along with co-writer Blake Clifton, mostly just gives us an under-baked war-documentary where aliens are just there for target practice.

Another found footage film. These things tend to be hit or miss. I say this for the movie, it did have some decent action scenes.

The film is about a documentary crew filming the men of out post 37. Located in the middle of nowhere, the outpost is used to clean up the "leftovers" of an alien invasion.

Pulling on the chain of the currant war of the time, the movie focus on the relationship between soldiers out on the field too long before the main attraction of seeing the monster.

In a predator like matter we learned to care about the boys and why they are fighting the enemy before they get slowly picked off.

Overall it was a hit for me. I love the action sequences and it felt like a real documentary.

While a little slow at times, this SciFi delivers a story that unfolds like a documentary, reminds me of district 9 without being a copy of it. Its refreshing to see a SciFi with a story, without a large amount of special effects, about an Earth we can relate to without too many futuristic changes. For a low budget film I think it turned out well.

I make it a habit if the film looks interesting then I do not pay attention to reviews unless there are many with less than 3 stars. Most people are very critical in ratings and many 5 star films I have liked and few big budget I thought were waste of time and money.

This was worth the time and money.

I'm on the fence of 7 or 8 stars so I gave it an 8 because I really think I will see it again.

I hope to see a sequel

This was a really well made film. As a disabled veteran I enjoyed the insight into military camaraderie. Well worth my time. Shooting the goats of the locals was a jab at soldiers that I didn't think was accurate or beneficial to the film. Hence the 8 instead of 9 for the film. The alien technologies mixed in with identifiable everyday "Earth" elements was well done. It did feel like it was encroaching on Earth and did not belong. The staging and cinematography was top notch. I really hope they do a sequel. I think you will see more from this director and his team. Being a scifi buff I again liked the blending of reality with fantasy. I could envision something like this happening.