Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.0

Outpost: Black Sun Blu-ray Movie Review

They're Not Here for Our Brains

Reviewed by Michael Reuben November 4, 2012

Outpost: Black Sun is a sequel, but don't let that dissuade you. It's been so neatly conceived as a standalone experience that it can be enjoyed on its own terms without any knowledge that a previous film exists. I mention the first film only to preempt any discouragement by the inevitable spoilsport who protests that everyone should boycott O:BS until the original Outpost is released on Blu-ray. There's no need to postpone enjoying a good film.

The Outpost franchise, of which a third entry is now in progress, is (you'll forgive the term) the brainchild of Black Camel Pictures, the production company of Scottish couple Arabella Croft and Kieran Parker. Parker's initial story concept involved a group of mercenaries led by a former British Royal Marine, who had been hired to reconnoiter an abandoned Nazi bunker in Eastern Europe. What they find are records of gruesome experiments and a lot of undead SS militia. Parker's concept was expanded into a script by Rae Brunton and effectively directed on a shoestring budget by Steve Barker, with the Scottish highlands standing in for Eastern Europe. It helped that Barker was able to recruit a strong lead for the head mercenary: Ray Stevenson, recently seen on Showtime's Dexter as the icily suave crime boss, Isaak Sirko. Sony picked up the film for distribution on DVD in the U.S. and, after a successful reception here, gave it a 2008 theatrical release in Europe.

Director Barker had already thought of the idea for O:BS. He'd shot some 16mm footage for the mercenaries in Outpost to find, purportedly from the last days of the Third Reich. What if, Barker asked, one of the youthful figures in the background of that footage were still alive today and intent on exploiting the research created in that ghoulish bunker? From that germ of an idea, Barker and Brunton wrote an entirely new script, which became O:BS.

In what amounts to a prologue set in present day Paraguay, we meet Lena Jonas (Catherine Steadman), for whom the pursuit of Nazi war criminals is something of a family business. Her Moby Dick is a German scientist named Klausener (Philip Barratt, young; David Gant, old). At the moment, she is seeking information about Klausener from a man named Neurath, himself a notorious war criminal who commanded a concentration camp. In a bit of stunt casting, Neurath is played by Michael Byrne, who played the vicious Nazi General Vogel in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. This is neither the last nor the most direct reference to the Indiana Jones franchise in O:BS. I won't describe the biggest one, but it's elaborate, unmistakable and exceptionally witty.

Among the vital clues from Lena's South America mission is a map of Europe with a circle around an apparently unremarkable spot in the east. When Lena arrives there, she finds unexpected tension, what appear to be NATO forces (their exact loyalties are never clearly spelled out), and a scientist-adventurer named Wallace (Richard Coyne) with whom she's previously crossed paths. Wallace shows her the video feed from a NATO scouting party that didn't survive the encounter with some sort of zombie enemy. A freeze frame shows the face of a commanding officer who was supposed to have died during World War II. Whatever technology is responsible for this resurrection, Wallace wants to get to it first. He doesn't trust any government to behave responsibly once it gains possession of that sort of power.

Lena's map from Paraguay corresponds with satellite readings that show a field of electromagnetism emanating from the point circled on the map—and expanding rapidly. Everyone who enters the field gets killed, but Lena and Wallace enter anyway. They encounter soldiers, who are none too happy to be burdened with civilians, but they end up taking along Wallace because of his technical skills. Through skirmishes and ambushes, each encounter a costly one, the group approaches the mysterious bunker. It doesn't give up its secrets easily, not without fights, casualties, a decent amount of gore and an encounter with some byproducts of Klausener's experiments that probably weren't part of the original plan.

During this entire time, the electromagnetic field cuts off communications between the team and its commanders, who have orders to nuke the entire site if the threat cannot be contained by conventional means. And what of Klausener? We see the elderly man early on, feeble but alert, and clearly somehow engaged in these proceedings. We know it's him from the distinctive birthmark under the left eye that the old man shares with the younger self in the footage from 1945. But where the old man is now and what part he's playing remains unknown until the very end.

Barker derives major production value from the Scottish exteriors, uses digital effects intelligently to add war-torn texture and takes full advantage of production designer James Lapsley’s imaginative bunker sets. The result is to make O:BS feel like a bigger and more expensive movie than it is. Sharp editing, creative lighting and persuasive acting help sell the limited make-up effects, and the entire enterprise is a tribute to the inventiveness of creative minds under the demands of a tight budget. When someone questions why I've given the film such a high score, the answer is simple: An effective B movie made for almost nothing shouldn't be judged on the same basis as Lawrence of Arabia. It should be judged on the same basis as other films that were made for almost nothing (or sometimes more) and aren't worth even ten minutes of your time.

Outpost: Black Sun Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Outpost: Black Sun was shot digitally. IMDb says that the camera was the Arri Alexa, but the equipment is less important than the fact of digital capture, which is plain from the image on Xlrator Media's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray. Although it is possible to capture and manipulate digital images into something that is almost indistinguishable from film (as, e.g., David Fincher and Jeff Cronenweth have demonstrated), most digital productions opt for a familiarly desaturated look, because, among other things, it helps disguise limits in the production budget. O:BS was shot by Darran Tiernan, who, as a veteran of British TV, is familiar both with digital cinema and tight budgets.

The Blu-ray's image is clean, free of noise and sharp, except where obscurity is deliberate, either for storytelling purposes or to conceal something that would break an illusion. Colors are generally dull and washed out, but in certain key scenes (e.g., the critical finale involving the "core" of the reanimation machine, or scenes involving Klausener) specific colors have been brought out in post-production for deliberate effect, primarily icy blue and blood red. Blacks are solid without crushing, and contrast is never overblown. As this is a digital effort from acquisition to authoring, the usual analog concerns of filtering and sharpening do not apply. Compression artifacts were not an issue.

Outpost: Black Sun Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The DTS-HD MA 5.1 soundtrack for O:BS provides some entertaining and impressive support for the visuals. Firefights, some of them featuring bright tracer bullets, zing through the surrounds. Deep and tight bass extension accompany the activity of not only the mysterious Nazi machine, but also the EMP devices with which the soldiers have equipped themselves as a countermeasure. When one of these is activated, it commandeers the soundtrack for a brief period; anyone without a subwoofer may want to adjust their settings. A lengthy scene involving the machine itself causes a cacophony of mechanical, steam and electrical sounds all around, and another one that's hard to describe except that there's lots of lightning bolts is equally impressive.

The reanimated Nazi troops make a variety of grunts, groans, shrieks and guttural sounds that are not meant to be understood but set an appropriate mood. Dialogue between the two principal characters, Lena and Wallace, is always intelligible, even though both are played by British actors doing American accents (Lena's is more credible than Wallace's). Most of the other cast speak with British accents and are perfectly intelligible, with the exception of the soldiers, many of whom have strong Scots accents that may challenge the ear of American viewers. Don't hesitate to switch on the subtitles.

Outpost: Black Sun Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• The Making of Outpost: Black Sun (480ip; 1.78:1; 5:06): In this EPK, director Barker and producer Parker discuss the film's origin and production. Through brief, the feature is informative.



• Trailer (1080p; 2.35:1; 2:05): An effective preview.



• Additional Trailers (1080p): At startup the disc plays trailers for The Thompsons, Bigfoot: The Lost Coast Tapes, Greystone Park and Gangsters, Guns and Zombies. These can be skipped with the chapter forward button and are not otherwise available once the disc loads.

Outpost: Black Sun Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

O:BS will probably disappoint the hardcore horror crowd, because it's more of a thriller with horror elements. It has its share of gore, but not to excess and nothing you haven't seen before. Certainly gore is not its primary mechanism of dread. When the film presents its explorers with horrific tableaux of bodies piled up left and right, the object isn't to revolt the audience with a display of gooey entrails. It's to stir up even more unsettling memories of a society that actually did that to people, one whose iconography is displayed everywhere throughout O:BS's production design. Like Russell Davies' Torchwood, O:BS uses a science fiction premise, but its true power comes from the facts of human history. The sci-fi keeps it interesting, but it's the history that makes it terrifying. Highly recommended.