A company man hires a group of mercenaries to get him into a war zone in Eastern Europe under the pretence that he has bought real estate there for mining rights after the war. They arrive at an underground bunker which has evidence of past Nazi occupation. A heap of bodies is found, along with one survivor who appears to have regressed into himself. Meanwhile, the company man has found his goal which he calls the Holy Grail of physics - a machine that the Nazis were working on along the same lines as Einstein's unified field theory. The mercenaries begin to experience strange phantom figures and violent supernatural phenomena. The Nazis were trying to create super-soldiers and it seems they may still exist within the electro-magnetic fields...

It's refreshing to be pleasantly surprised every so often by a film. Three-quarters of the running time proves captivating as we have a group of men who are not only extremely diverse in character, beliefs and temperament, but more fundamentally in nationality. This makes for a more interesting mix of soldiers. Also, having a solid science - albeit techno-babble based in fact - means that the aggressors are not simply reduced to the status of mundane film ghosts or zombies. There's a very real and convincing reason for their existence.

The last quarter is where the film seriously lets itself down. Anyone who has read my recent review of The Passage will already know what I think of this type of ending - it serves no purpose at all, and to my mind is sloppy writing. I thought perhaps the makers of Outpost would have learnt from the similar circumstances of the excellent Dog Soldiers how to really accomplish a suitable conclusion.

There are some nice extras here, including: Deleted Scenes, a Director Commentary and Behind the Scenes featurettes.

7

Ty Power