Outpost

Hey, what do you know? Just about at the time that you get totally beaten down by godawful Z grade horror movie after godawful Z grade horror movie, along comes a super low budget little flick like this to show how it is done. Not much happens, the entire film is shot in greys and in a very limited and very visually unexciting locale. But there was a lot to like about this attempt.

I think much of the credit has to go to the script writer and director in this one, who make the most out of the little they have on hand. They stress atmosphere, sharply drawn characters, and then, in an almost unprecedented development in low grade horror, people who actually act in smart and logical fashion. The squad of soldiers in this one really moves and acts like a squad of soldiers. There is a reason for them to be where they are. There is a reason they are trapped. They take cover, lay claymores, worry about high ground and suppressing fire, pair off in twos to search, and in general never give you any reason to question whether they are actors rather than military men. That is INDCREDIBLY refreshing, and adds a remarkable degree of believability to the whole exercise, in much the way that the marines in Aliens (obviously a vastly superior movie) acted like actual soldiers and made you believe it. And in the same vein, all of the characters here have solid, believable dialogue and react in believable fashion when put under stress. The acting is solid, nobody is flat, there are no stupid joke characters, few cheap scares. The whole thing is just very intelligently done.

Now of course in the end, its still Grade Z horror. They have almost no budget, not much goes on, the premise is both clichéd and shaky, and most problematically the intelligence shown toward the characters is not duplicated in the highly erratic depiction of their opponents (the rules change every time they meet for no apparent reason). But it is the sophistication of the overall attempt here that lets me give this one a solid ranking. They had little to work with, but they actually made a real effort to turn out a quality product here. That deserves something, and in the future it would be nice to see these same people involved in a project with more ambition and money behind it.

Us Brits have got reasonably good at producing limited budget scary flicks like this where a group of armed protagonists are stuck in an isolated location and have to fight supernatural forces (Dog Soldiers, The Descent, Deathwatch). I enjoyed most of this movie. It only started to get ridiculous towards the end. Anyone who gets the twists in movies easily will have the entire film sussed in the first twenty minutes, and anyone who doesn't might be pleasantly surprised by it. Either way it makes it difficult to comment directly without spoiling it.

However I can say this. A rag tag group of mercenaries are hired on false pretences to accompany and protect a scientist in search of something in an abandoned bunker in Eastern Europe. We get to this point fairly quickly without a laborious preamble. Once there, strange things begin to happen and the soldiers begin to get picked off. There is a reason for these goings on, and to start with it is handled quite well but the writer/director messed up big time by not exploring it more and because early on walls and doors are no obstacle to the enemy, and claymores and trip wires remain untriggered. The enemy does not do what they want it to, it cannot be predicted and comes an goes in small groups. However in the climax the walls and doors are an obstacle and suddenly the enemy is very helpful in it's own possible demise, setting off claymores and tripwires and coming at them en masse and predictably.

Additionally I would very much like to have seen more exploration of why these things were happening and the motivation of the enemy. But alas there isn't and in the final act it just becomes silly, their actions show they have an agenda but earlier on it was explained that they were just doing what they knew.

Because of budget limitations there are very few special effects but be clear this isn't a 'low budget' film with all the negatives that go with that label. what is done is done well, it's very atmospheric, and the lighting and cinematography is very good. The actors all put in decent performances, there's a couple of good lines, one very iconistic shot with a flag (you'll know when you see it) and some good gruesome deaths.

All told this is quite a good movie given it's limitations, but what a shame the story gets silly in the final act. I came away having enjoyed it but for once in my life wishing it had had some big US money behind it.

Worth watching. Not as good as Dog Soldiers, or The Descent but better than Deathwatch and The Cave.

A well produced, horror flick that follows some many traditions in this field. A good "hook" script idea with a poorly thought out, daft explanation. Too many horror films-when dealing with out of this world concepts-do exactly the same. Lets have a brief 10 minute exposition of the just read out from the script by a leading character! Still, it has some creepiness and fairly good cinematography, a muted. bleached colour/contrast (ala Saving Private Ryan). The plus points are the enemy-shadows of their former selves; shadows of SS army ghosts (or ae they?). Aside from the problems with the "lets quickly make up an explanation" theory thrown in, the main problems are as follows: The mercenaries seem to made up of a spectrum of foreign soldiers-which is fine-but the accents of some are amusingly bad! "You can be sure o one ting. No-bod-dy gives a foook about oz!" says the "African" guy. The accents didn't totally kill the films "playing it straight" approach, but did bring out a wry smile!

Unlike Neil Marshall's Dog Soldiers effort, this film lacked any sense of humour at all and might have been better for a "Hicks" type character from "Aliens" to have a mordant black sense of doom and humour. There seems to be one Irish soldier employed for this purpose but most of his lines fall fairly flat for the most part, although he is merely unrecognisable from the Simon Pegg/Nick Frost "Spaced" series, where he played (a v.funny) cycle courier with a mind messed by drug use! Overall, the visual design was very good despite its obvious budget constraints, such as the ghost/zombie elements-notably the Nazi approach from the back-lit tree-line. Are they underfire, or not? Well worth a watch then but I walked away feeling that it could have been so much better. I think the writer of this might have been influenced by a few films but...... Many years a go (back in 1977) I went to see cheap schlock horror movie starring Peter Cushing, about a zombie U boat crew who rise from the depths to kill the cast one by one. It was quite effective for the time-probably a bit daft and tame now-but the memory of it stayed with me. Shock waves, Almost Human and Dead Corps were the titles it ran under.

In a European country devastated by the war, a group of six mercenaries leaded by DC (Ray Stevenson) is hired by the engineer Hunt (Julian Wadham) to protect him in a travel to a no man's land. In accordance with Hunt, he is the representative of a group of investors and he has been assigned to visit one facility in one of their real estates. When they arrive in the spot, they find an old Nazi bunker with a pilot machine and evidences of gruesome experiments with human beings and one survivor. While protecting the outpost, they are attacked by invisible enemies; when Hunt discloses the truth about the mysterious device, DC realizes that they have to fight to survive to an invincible supernatural army.

"Outpost" is a horror movie that keeps a claustrophobic atmosphere, but has many unexplained situations. Why the fiends did not kill the whole group at once? Why the fiends became corporal? Why the leader of the fiends stays in the bunker? Why the mercenaries keep shooting the fiends if they know that their bullets and mines are ineffective? In the end, "Outpost" entertains, but I really prefer the South Korean "R-Point" or the British "The Keep" (1983) that give better explanation to the supernatural events. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Missão de Risco" ("Risky Mission")

Eastern Europe , present day . A regular team is hired by a retainer (Julian Wadham ) to a company that acquired some real state there . They must go a place where every couple of months it witches between government and insurgent hands . The leader is a tough mercenary (Ray Stevenson ) . He'll operate six-man fire team , the money is six thousand US per man , cash , payable only on the safe return . Equipment (Richard Brake , Michael Smiley, Frost , Blair , among others ) will run to another five , up front. Then the regular army has positions to the south and insurgent to the north UN safe area is southwest . Then they encounter a German bunker plenty of relics where happen weird events. The group meets a pale man and they reckon the locals used this location for a little bit of the ethnic cleansing and they moved on . It was like a slaughterhouse down there . Then the employer communicates : ¨ On site , item located . Take all necessary steps ¨. Later on ,they encounter a machine which could be the Holy Grial of physics , there are four faces that control matter , the key has been trying to find how those forces interact . If they can do that , then they can explain the behaviour of all the substance in the universe. Einstein coined a phrase ¨ unified field theory ¨. Many people thought he was close to finding a solution . But when he saw the atomic bomb test at Trinity , he abandoned the research and destroyed his notes . Nobody has even come close to finding a solution since . Then the Nazis were working on the same thing , a machine designed to manipulate an unified field and the chamber above it where they found the bodies was built to control the resultant energy , contain it . As the Germans were trying to win a war . But with this technology , its application and impact in the modern world would be limitless and probably priceless . After that , they watch some Nazi footage as : the Third Reich was renowned for dabbling with the occult . Fantasy blending with scientific research , the ¨Field Theory¨ would have been perfect for them . An equation that could bend space and time , potentially alter reality . They were running some kind of trials on these soldiers . Exposing them to the energy harnessed in that chamber above , they were trying to enhance the men . Theoretically , the human body could become fused , disappear , interwoven with the magnetic fields themselves . The American tried something similar in 1943 . An attempt was to render a warship the USS Eldridge , invisible , using Einstein's theories , ¨The Philadelphia Experiment ¨ . Urban myth has it they were partially successful . The Nazis were attempting something similar , maybe even more ambitious . A soldier that was invulnerable and unstoppable . An army that could travel thousand of miles and nobody would be any the wiser until it materialised at the gates of the White House .

This exciting movie displays thrills , chills , warfare action and lots of blood and gore . Well played by Ray Stevenson as tough commandant , he is doing an interesting career in strong roles as Rome and Punisher 2 . Dark cinematography by Struthers and suspenseful musical score by James Seymour . The flick is professionally written and directed by Steve Barker in his only film and he is preparing the second part . Rating : Good . Nice thrilling movie full of action and violence.