ACTING 4/10 : Generic acting for the genre with way too much accent impersonation which leads to lack of credibility.SOUNDTRACK 5/10 : Nothing memorable.SPECIAL EFFECTS 8/10 : Simple and downright good. Everything is kept practical and clean. Camera work is great and visuals are fantastic. Some pet peeve of mine includes that over the top light in the trees. Not so sure about that.PLOT 7/10 : Straightforward. Nothing new on dealing with weird bunkers in the middle of nowhere. You're drawn into the plot, but then you realize it's a kinda funny idea that might draw out the horror aspect of the movie; although I was interested enought to see where they would head with it. Sadly, I think the ending was way generic and overused in the genre.OVERALL 6/10 : Outpost (2008) adds a new entry into the old mix of movies about people digging in on something that should never be seen again, specially if involves being underground. It's a rather overused idea that works just fine. If you can tolerate some acting flaws, I'd say it's a nice B-horror flick.

I first bought this as it was a pound in a DVD store.Went home and put this in and expected something ridiculous i can watch for a laugh, something akin to Romero's Land of the Dead.I started watching this and as it progressed i couldn't help get dragged in and start rooting for the characters.It felt a bit rushed and with a few scenes of Over-acting. but they make up for it in Action and gore!The ending set up the next film nicely as well, but i won't ruin it for anyone.if you watch this i would definitely recommend watching the next 2, even though 2 is a bit off beat.

This film deserves a lot of praise just for effort alone. It delivers EXACTLY what it says on the tin, and is a lot of fun. What more could you ask?The setup is great, and the location is perfect. They get a lot of mileage and suspense out of a near-empty field and some gloomy corridors.The performances are good all-round, and the characters are drawn with enough depth that you care when something happens to them.Apart from that, the plot is silly silly silly - but it's a horror film, I really don't think that's going to put anyone off. Also at least the plot provides for some quite creepy situations, especially in the lead-up when you don't know what is happening.I have one major criticism and it will probably attract ghouls rather than repel anyone - it resorts to torture-porn, briefly, in a couple of places. They weren't enough to wreck the film, but after most of the film is dark-house-spooky it was a bit much.And finally: as has probably been mentioned by other critics, fans of a certain FPS computer game series (I am one) will almost certainly get a kick out of this film!Verdict: Silly, has its faults, but very well executed and quite enjoyable.

Why ask why? Outpost is the answer to that question. This could have been a kick ass little horror flick if the people who made it had bothered to figure out the "why" of their story instead of plowing forward as if it didn't matter. It has a nice cast, a good look, effective direction and there are moments in it that are fairly well written. The failure to have any rationale or reason for what happens, however, keeps this movie from ever being more than just okay.A polyglot team of mercenaries is rounded up to escort a mysterious man named Hunt (Richard Brake) into the middle of some nondescript Eastern European war zone. They find a hidden bunker that was once the site of experiments in Nazi super-science and is now dark and empty…or is it? A clump of seeming corpses and the surrounding woods full of vanishing enemies are just the start of the terrors facing these men of war.Now, first of all, the folks distributing Outpost are trying to pass it off as a zombie movie. It's not. It's a ghost story with some sci-fi exposition. Don't be fooled.Secondly, while three of the mercenaries are straight out of Ethnic Stereotypes 'R Us and Hunt just serves the Almightly Plot Hammer, there are four nicely drawn and well performed characters on display here. Ray Stevenson as the mercenary leader is a remarkably appealing tough guy. He has an unpolished, unchiseled masculinity that doesn't have to strain for strength and hardness. If the Hollywood marketing machine would stop wasting time with 20something pretty boys and get behind more guys like Stevenson, I bet they'd be happily surprised at the response. There's also a good and unforced dynamic between Richard Burke as a defiant, amoral, atheist and Paul Blair and the religious soldier he confronts and confounds. The script does a fine job of first presenting the fearlessness of Burke's character and the fearfulness of Blair's and then deconstructing them. Burke's guy is ultimately revealed to be kind of crazily self-destructive in his refusal to acknowledge anything greater than himself while Blair's guy is the only one of the group who doesn't delude himself about what they're facing. And Michael Smiley wonderfully captures the true meaning of the word "mercenary".Thirdly, and most unfortunately, the absence of any logic to who and what the Nazi ghosts are why they do the things they do leaves Outpost with a terribly muddled middle and an ending that, while well executed, doesn't make a lick of sense. In this sort of story, the middle is where you explain what the threat is and why it's being a threat. Those answers then lead into how your heroes are going to fight back or at least escape with their lives. And even if you're going to kill your heroes in the end, the viewer needs to have something to grab onto to make them think the good guys might survive. This film doesn't offer up any of that up. The explanation of the Nazi ghosts is vague and perfunctory and while there's some scary and freaky stuff that happens, there's never any purpose or design behind it. The end result is a final battle that is very well staged but needs these Nazi ghosts that can turn invisible and intangible to materialize and walk slowly forward in solid form so the heroes can repeatedly shoot them.One of the acid tests for this kind of horror flick is why the evil force doesn't immediately slaughter everyone. The good ones figure out a reason for that. The bad ones don't even bother. Outpost is a weird mix because it's a good one that doesn't bother. There are parts of this script that are just markedly dumber than the rest. Now, given the low standards of the genre, that's not a fatal flaw. It is a shame, though, because this movie could have been so much better with a little more thought.