Movie 158: Outpost

DC (Ray Stevenson) and his band of mercenaries are hired by a man to lead him in to a war zone. They find an old Nazi bunker which contains one mysterious survivor, thought to be from recent ethnic cleansing, and an SS secret experiment. Why did the man hire them, and what the hell were the Nazis up to?

If I’d known that this film was about Zombie Nazi’s, kind of, I would have left it until number 200 to have some Dead Snow symmetry. This is very different to Dead Snow though as its far from a comedy and they aren’t TECHNICALLY zombies.

The Nazis make perfect fodder for horror sci fi films. Not only were they outright evil bastards, but they worked on crazy science experiments and dabbled in the occult. What you have here is a bit of a combination of the two with the SS trying to find some kind of unified theory machine that can make invincible soldiers. The science bollocks was a little vague by being overly detailed, and I’m pretty sure it wildly wrong.

Anyway it doesn’t matter as that kind of stuff is just a story explanation excuse. Like the dilithium crystals in the warp core depolarising the quantum matrix and needing an inverse tachyon field to fix them. Technobabble.

I mentioned Ray Stevenson’s name because he was the Punisher in War Zone, so he’s recognisable. The only other face that stood out for me was Michael Smiley who played Tyres, the pilled out Irish bike courier in Spaced. It was nice to see him again and he does a bang up job. All the main cast do pretty well. The band is diverse with a Welsh leader, Scottish Medic and Irish, African, Eastern European, and American soldiers. Possibly others, hard to remember. The chemistry between them is good, they have some actual back story fleshing out and the soldiering is above par for a low budget thriller. They communicate and movie like an actual squad. Makes a nice change.

An unstoppable enemy, some vague science and some well rounded characters. Can’t complain about that. While it is missing some kind of greatness to rise it up, possibly a bit slow but I honestly couldn’t put a finger on it, this is a decent way to spend 90 minutes. There are certainly worse ways.

And low budget film makers take note. They might not have had much, but its all up there on screen. As it should be.

Next up: A Force of One. My first ever Chuck Norris film (not counting Enter The Dragon or whatever Bruce Lee one he was in)!