Review - Outpost (2008)

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There are really only few things better than drinking an excellent Scottish single malt whiskey while talking about a film with an undead Waffen-SS killer commando unit...






The Plot - There By Spoilers (you've been warned)


In a seedy bar in a town ravaged by war, scientist and businessman Hunt (Julian Wadham) hires mercenary and former Royal Marine D.C. (Ray Stevenson) to assemble a crack team of ex-soldiers, Prior (Richard Brake), Jordan (Paul Blair), Cotter (Enoch Frost), Voytech (Julian Rivett), McKay (Michael Smiley) and Taktarov (Brett Fancy), to protect him on a dangerous journey into no-man's land. Their mission is to scope out an old military bunker in Eastern Europe. It should be easy – 48 hours at the most. Lots of cash for little risk. Or so he says...

Once at the outpost, the men make a horrific discovery that turns their mission on its head – the scene of a bloody and gruesome series of experiments, carried out by the SS, in reality shifting and reanimation during World War II to create invincible soldiers. Amidst the carnage, they find a survivor (Johnny Meres).

At night, the clearing around the bunker is suddenly lit up, and silhouettes of people are seen amongst the light. Soon after, a member of their team called Tak goes missing and is gruesomely killed by an unseen foe. Later the same night Voyteche is killed by two Nazis. The next morning his and Tak's dead bodies are found linked together by the head, and Tak's containing a spent round in his skull. D.C. receives answers regarding the assignment from Hunt, which was that an unnamed corporation wanted Hunt to find and recover a large generator-like device which was responsible for the SS's reality-shifting experiments. D.C. orders Cotter to retrieve Hunt from the generator room. However, while trying to convince Hunt to come with him, an SS soldier with a pickaxe kills Cotter. It is revealed that the survivor the mercenaries recovered was actually a surviving SS brigadier general, with Prior killing the officer, the "breather" comes back to life and MacKay speaks his last words of "You're hummin' my balls!", and is killed. The mercenaries and Hunt attempt to evacuate the outpost only to be killed by the undead German army.
A second corporate team arrives 72 hours later to carry out the same assignment, only to "find a breather" among the piles of naked corpses and face the illuminated soldiers surrounding the bunker, in the distance stands the brigadier general who gives the SS soldiers a nod and they begin their assault on the team before the credits roll.


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Jordan, D.C., Hunt and Prior in the bunker.



OUTPOST is a low budget movie in the best sense of the word. The producers and the director had about 200,000 GBP at their disposal for shooting a feature length movie and the result is astonishing, to say the least. Making good use of scarce exterior shots in a Scottish industrial park while centering much of the narrative around a set of only a handful of adaptable rooms and corridors and the very effective use of lighting and darkness never make it obvious that OUTPOST was essentially done on a Hollywood set's weekly catering budget.


There is a real sense of mystery and a certain realistic harshness in the movie's portrayal of what is supposed to be a wartorn unnamed eastern European country, and when they enter the bunker in that strangely deserted hollow for the first time you're not certain what to expect of it.

Atmospherically, OUTPOST reminded me of Dog Soldiers in a good way. It's about men usually good at what they do confronted by an outside context problem.




Surprisingly, it's neither the action nor the gore that carry the movie but the great chemistry and interaction between the diverse set of characters. I swear to you, each of these guys has a different accent, different take on events, different philosophy. Granted, some don't get to explain there's in detail due to premature cases of death, but Michael Smiley, Ray Stevenson and the others make up for it. They aren't all exactly likeable, but they are actual characters.




Lastly there are the movie's antagonists, and I find myself a bit enarmored by OUTPOST's take on the "undead Nazi" trope. The Waffen-SS commando unit that slowly kills D.C.'s mercs are not your regular undead. They are no mindless, flesh-eating zombies or "Wolfenstein"-like mutations. In fact, the best way to describe them would be as, well, soldiers. Soldiers from whom any shred of humanity and compassion and much of what defined them as individuals was ripped, but still soldiers. These are no mindless killing machine. Heartless, yes. Inhuman, sure. But not mindless. They work as a team, they use weapons (mostly of the stabby sort since, well, ammo degradation I guess) and they are utterly without mercy.




Is the movie perfect? Of course not. It has its share of problems. Ironically, despite OUTPOST's meager budget the production design and the equipment isn't among them. The main problem is the inconsistency in the undead Nazis' abilities (mental capacity-wise and supernatural). If you watch the movie and compare the scene in which Cotter gets killed in a one-on-one fight compared to how the undead act later you'll understand what I mean. All in all we're looking at a couple of logical gaps. They are no game breakers, but they are there.

Final Verdict: B+. OUTPOST is a nice little movie with a great, if largely noname, cast, good production values and a fresh menace. It should certainly be worth 90 minutes of your time and the few dollars it'll take you to fish it out of the bargain bin.

I feel obliged to mention that a sequel called OUTPOST: BLACK SUN exists. Don't watch it. Despite a much higher budget compared to OUTPOST it has all its flaws and none of its merits.