OUTPOST

(director: Steve Barker; screenwriters: Rae Brunton/story by Kieran Barker, Steven Barker and Rae Brunton; cinematographer: Gavin Struthers; editors: Chriss Gill/Alastair Reid; music: James Brett; cast: Ray Stevenson (DC), Julian Wadham (Hunt), Richard Brake (Prior), Paul Blair(Jordan), Brett Fancy (Taktarov), Enoch Frost(Cotter), Julian Rivet(Voyteche), Michael Smiley (McKay), Johnny Meres(The Breather); Runtime: 86; MPAA Rating: R; producers: Arabella Page Croft/Kieran Barker,; Sony/Screen Gems; 2008)

“It’s a commercial attempt to pull in some coin during the popular zombie craze sweeping the world of cinema.“

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

This derivative Death Watch (1980) and Shock Waves (1977, the best zombie film ever) British horror flick, shot on a low-budget, is set in the present. It tells about the explosive conflict between modern mercenary soldier treasure hunters and ghostly Nazis. Brit filmmaker Steve Barker (“The Rezort”) keeps the action moving but the confusing script by Rae Brunton makes this one too muddled to be believed even if atmospheric, well-photographed, well-scored and filled with well-staged action sequences throughout.

It’s a commercial attempt to pull in some coin during the popular zombie craze sweeping the world of cinema. Somewhere in war-torn Eastern Europe the tight-lipped wealthy Brit businessman engineer Hunt (Julian Wadham) has assembled a platoon of six grizzled mercenary soldiers led by DC (Ray Stevenson), a macho ex-Royal Marine, and after paying them for their military support doesn’t tell them much else. Things become a little clearer when the men discover an abandoned bunker from WWII and find a room full of catatonic men stripped naked and realize that the bunker was a Nazi outpost. This signals the pic to turn weird, as the big prize sought by Hunt is a secret Nazi war experimental machine. It’s a priceless invention that can manipulate Einstein’s conceptual ‘unified field’ to enable the creation of unstoppable soldiers who can travel through time and space. Supernatural things occur, as the near invisible undead Nazi SS troops suddenly appear to ward off the intruders from retrieving the machine.

The intense fighting has the soldiers of fortune doing everything they can to survive. Ultimately, the film provides a fulfilling gore-fest for the action crowd, but fails to give clarity to its mystifying story and unfairly leaves the viewer to sort things out from an undeveloped story and its pitiful dialogue.

REVIEWED ON 9/12/2017 GRADE: C   https://dennisschwartzreviews.com/