UGO.com review link:http://www.ugo.com/ugo/html/article/?id=18308§ionId=2
Outpost – DVD Review
By Matt Gamble
I can hear the pitch meeting now, “It’s Dawn of the Dead meets Castle Wolfenstein.” Call me a man of simple pleasure, but dammit if I don’t love me some zombies. Be they fast, slow, Jamaicans sucking on puffer fish poison, or merely infected people with bad tempers – they are all good. It is a simple mathematical fact that zombies + X = Awesome, with X representing any plot point you may choose. Take for instance Outpost, which is a movie about a group of hard core mercenaries who are recruited to ferret out an old bunker located somewhere in Eastern Europe. What they can’t possibly know is that this bunker is protected by a brigade of undead, immortal Nazi super-soldiers that will kill anyone who enters their secret lair. I can hear the pitch meeting now, “It’s Dawn of the Dead meets Castle Wolfenstein.” I don’t know about you but that premise totally makes me soil my trousers.
Now I know what you are thinking, Outpost can’t possibly be anything more then a crappy B-movie, they’ll just muck up the whole thing anyways. But I am here to tell you that you couldn’t be more mistaken, i.e. you’re an idiot. Not only is the premise killer, but the effects are solid, and the acting, thanks in large part to a group of semi-recognizable character actors, is actually quite good. The only thing truly lacking is in the soundtrack, in which there effectively is none. An effective and original score is the only thing holding Outpost back from a cult following like say Ravenous.
But what is truly frustrating is the lack of special features on the DVD. Outside of a handful of deleted scenes, and don’t get me wrong I was happy to watch them, there is nothing else offered. I would have waded through an entire battalion of undead Nazi super-soldiers to hear the thoughts of either screenwriter Rae Brunton or director Steve Barker about making Outpost. Or heck, what about the actors explaining what it is like to receive directions like “Ok now the undead Nazi super-soldier is going to burrow up out of the ground and grab hold of you from behind. Now another is going to slowly slide a knife into your mouth, good, good, show the fear. What’s he doing? Is he going to stab you? No, he’s going to slowly twist the knife to pry your mouth open. Now you are very frightened, so frightened you can’t scream. Good, excellent. Now you finally start working up the strength to scream, yes YES, but before you scream he rips your eye out. Great, excellent aaaaaaaand cut!”
Sure, it might be asking a bit too much from a direct-to-DVD film to include multiple commentaries, but dammit Sony, you’ve got a kick ass little film here. How about loosening your damn purse strings a bit and give the inevitable fan base something it truly will want?
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