The low budget (but remarkably effective) survival horror flick Outpost (2008) is an object lesson in how to work very well with very little: how less can easily be more, with the application of a little imagination. Plus ghost Nazi killing machines! Whats not to like? A group of mercenaries are hired by a sinister cabal at extortionate rates to head into Eastern Europe to pick up and deliver an item from an old abandoned facility. Once they get there however, they discover that the facility was a World War II German army post, chock full of old Nazi stuff including documentation of the top secret experimentation that was taking place there. It transpires that the Third Reich were busily engaged in applying Einsteinian relativistic theory and all kinds of bad mathematical voodoo to create a new race of impossible, unstoppable soldiers, spliced with another dimension of reality to make them a kind of quantum ghost: appearing and reappearing where they please, killing sadistically at will (because, you know, Nazis yo). Unable to materialise in our dimension outside of the local area of the outpost of the title, the experimental SS killers were confined and unable to hurt anyone until the mercenaries appeared to steal the secrets that created them. Thats bad news for the team of hard-bitten soldiers that act as the films doomed protagonists, a la Aliens and Dog Soldiers, but good news for fans of nasty cinematic dread. Fairly well received at the time, Outpost would later spawn two inferior direct-to-DVD sequels (well, one sequel and one prequel), the law of diminishing returns applying as usual.
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
