'Outpost' DVD Review

Pros

• Well acted
• Visually appealing
• Spooky bad guys
• Good special effects

Cons

• Slow pace
• Not enough done with the characters
• Plot?

Description

• Starring Ray Stevenson, Julian Wadham, Richard Brake, Paul Blair, Brett Fancy, Enoch Frost, Julian Rivett
• Directed by Steve Barker
• Rated R
• DVD Release Date: March 11, 2008

Guide Review - 'Outpost' DVD Review

The Movie

Outpost is one of those movies that asks you to overlook a ridiculous plot (Nazis using Einstein's theories of bending space and time to alter reality in order to create the perfect soldier by melding humans with magnetic fields?) in favor of rich atmosphere. For a good portion of the film, this actually works. It just takes so very long to get to the good stuff that, as a viewer, you're no longer vested in the final product.

The story actually gets to the titular "outpost" -- a World War II Nazi bunker -- soon enough, as a secretive man hires a team of mercenaries led by DC (Ray Stevenson) to provide security for his trip to the site. After some odd sounds and phantom gunfire, they find a room full of dead bodies -- and one not so dead -- signaling that something's rotten in Denmark (or whatever country they're in).

Then we begin a series of annoying "ghost games" that so many haunted house movies favor nowadays: ghostly figures popping up just out of the corner of a character's eye, a fleeting image just brief enough to make the character think it's his imagination, blah blah blah. If these ghosts truly mean harm, why don't they just go ahead and kill someone? In Outpost's case, it seems that the filmmakers made the Nazi spirits so unstoppable that if they had them actually act as efficient hunters, the movie would last for about 10 minutes.

The Nazis here are actually more material than "normal" ghosts -- sort of a mix of ghost and zombie. And when they finally manage to do something, they're quite intimidating, shadowy figures. As can be expected from Nazis, they're also sadistic with a mean streak that provides some nice gory moments. Still, they just don't do enough to make the film as thrilling as it should be, given the strong cast and direction.

The DVD

The only special features are a few deleted scenes.

Movie: C+
DVD: D