Outpost (2008)

Title: Outpost (2008)

Director: Steve Barker

Cast: Ray Stevenson, Julian Wadham, Richard Brake, Michael Smiley,

Review:

My search for that awesome Nazi zombie continues. So far Dead Snow continues to be the #1 Nazi zombie movie for me, nothing out there has topped it yet. Outpost was one of those nazi zombie movies that has managed to elude me. The other two being Oasis of the Zombies and The Bunker, but Im not in a huge hurry to see them. Still my Tireless Reader, I promise to get to them, just so we have that whole Nazi zombie sub-genre thing covered in its entirety.

Outpost is the story of a group of mercenaries who are getting payed by a private firm to search out an abandoned military bunker in Eastern Europe . They are promised that it’s a small operation, in and out, 48 hours the most. The leader of the mercenaries isn’t quite sure that they are going to search for minerals as he was told. The whole team suspects that the true meaning of their search is another. Soon, they discover that the abandoned military bunker used to belong to Nazis that were participating in some sort of experiment that deals with the re-animation of dead soldiers! It isn’t long before the team begins to get attacked by Nazi zombies! What exactly has this team of mercenaries been sent to look for? Can the team escape from the bunker with their lives?

So this low budget flick has a lot of good things for it. First of all, I have to give props to the filmmakers for making this film look better than it should look. This is a very low budget production, the filmmakers even mortgaged their home to make it, but their efforts paid off because the film got some critical acclaim and it was released in theaters in Britain, the films country of origin. These filmmakers were smart, since they had little money they cut back their costs by setting their film in the woods and in a claustrophobic military bunker, filled with shadows and darkness. The bunker setting made me remember films with a similar premise, like for example John Carpenter’s The Thing. You know the premise because its been reused to death in horror films. Basically you take a bunch of paranoid/scared dudes, you locke them up in a claustrophobic environment and then you have them go nuts amongst themselves. That’s what we get with Outpost. During the course of the film, characters get on each others nerves, they betray each other, despise each other, but they have to learn to pull together or perish.

I thought it was interesting how the film addresses the issue of belief. Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot films and documentaries that kind of question the way things are. I swear I’m not doing this on purpose! These are the kind of themes that are appearing in films today, questioning beliefs, questioning society, defying the way things are. For example, on Outpost we have two conflicting characters. One is a soldier who beliefs in god and country, going to church and all that, while we have another constantly defying his beliefs, telling him things like “nothing happens after we die, we just die” and this happens a lot during the movie, the questioning of the idea of god and what happens after death. This theme matches perfectly with the film because in essence this is a ghost movie. It’s never really explained very well, but apparently what we get in the film is a mix between zombies and ghosts. Kind of like the same thing that they did in Blood Creek, where we had a mix of zombies with vampires. So amongst other things, this film questions the afterlife and our belief in it, something that is commonly done in films that deal with the supernatural.

This movie handles suspense and atmosphere very well. The setting of the bunker is appropriately spooky for the kind of film this is. Lots of dark corners and passageways, you get a feeling of claustrophobia. My only problem is that the Nazi zombies take a little too long to appear. For a huge part of the film we don’t really see them up close and personal. This is another great way to save money in make up effects; you keep your characters hidden in the background, in shadows and silhouettes. On this movie, Id say that this worked great, it makes the group of Nazi zombies look more menacing.

On the downside, the film is so low budget that its scare techniques are very low key in nature. The Nazi zombies actually take a while to show up on screen, you get impatient when its been more than 40 minutes without a freaking zombie. But on the plus side, it does build up suspense very well, so I guess it compensates for that. Whenever the Nazi zombies appear in the forest, they do so with a blinding bolt of light that comes from the forest. The soldiers are attacked by a supernatural gust of wind. The Nazi zombies are some times kept far away in the woods, we see their silhouettes far in the woods, and whenever they get close and personal their faces are kept in shadows. Still, for a low budget flick, I say it could have been worse. If anything, what the film demonstrates is that all these filmmakers need is some cash to make a truly great film. So its one of those films that shows promise, but is set back by its budgetary limitations. Dead Snow is still my top choice for best Nazi zombie movie, followed by Shockwaves. Outpost could go on the #3 spot. Not a bad film, but it could have been so much more. Maybe things will turn out better in the proposed sequel: Outpost II: Black Sun.

Rating: 3 out of 5

Blood Creek (2009)

Title: Blood Creek (2009)

Director: Joel Schumacher

Cast: Dominic Purcell, Michael Fassbender, Henry Cavill

Writer: David Kajganich

Review:

What the hell happened to Joel Schumacher? The guy has directed some fine movies in his life time. The Lost Boys, St. Elmos Fire, Flatliners, A Time To Kill are examples of his good ones. Of course, like any other director, he’s had his couple of duds. Batman Forever and Batman and Robin come to mind. Damn, the guy is known as the director who killed the Batman franchise! But hey, all directors are entitled to one or two misses in their careers. Schumacher does has some decent flicks under his belt, which is the main reason why when I saw Blood Creek go straight to dvd I was a bit surprised. Joel Schumacher straight to dvd? Oh how the mighty have fallen! Then I noticed Blood Creek is  a Nazi zombie movie, so for that alone, I was attracted to rent the film. I thought “at least this straight to dvd horror flick has got an experienced director behind it. Plus it’s a Nazi zombie movie” So I rented it, expecting Id get at the very least a decent straight to video horror film. Boy was I wrong!

The spooky farmhouse where most of the film takes place

Story is all about Hitler and his supposed interest in the occult. According to this film, Hitler was after some ancient runes that could supposedly bring the dead back to life. A family’s farm in West Virginia rests on top of one of these life giving runes, so Hitler sends one of his henchmen to the United States to investigate the rune and retrieve it. The family quickly accepts the nazi's offer because of the monetary compensation they get. Fastforward to modern times, and this evil nazi is now trapped in the basement of the home, and is looking for a way out. He has been kept alive for years and years by feeding on helpless victims. Apparently he has been gathering his strengths, waiting for his chance to live again. But one of his victims manages to escape! And this victim is looking to get some decent payback! Will he be able to destroy the Nazi zombie and his servants?

My special bone armor will protect me from evil!

The same thing that has happened with practically every Nazi zombie movie I have ever watched happened again. The thing about Nazi zombie movies is that they have a cool premise to play with, yet they always screw it up! These movies never take full advantage of the supernatural elements in their premises. Nazis, the occult, the supernatural…that’s a winning combination right there. So how come filmmakers are never able to make a decent Nazi zombie movie? Well, let me take that back. I did enjoy Dead Snow (2009). That one was pretty decent. Lots of gore, cool looking zombies. But Dead Snow is an exception to the rule, because as far as I know, every Nazi zombie movie I have seen blows. Blood Creek (or Town Creek as it is also known) was terrible. Why was it so bad?

For starters, the story doesn’t make much sense at times. This absence in logic could be due to a couple of things, but I believe one of them is the way the film was edited. I don’t know if Schumacher had anything to do with the editing process, because sometimes films are just taken away from directors by the producers and re-edited, but the way that this film is edited doesn’t really help you follow the story very well. Not that it’s a complicated story; it’s actually maybe too simplistic. For crying out loud, the whole film takes place in a farm! But if a movie can’t even tell a story that is “simple” in an understandable fashion, then you know something is definitely wrong. The script is filled with many plot holes and inconsistencies. You’ll be asking lots of questions and getting no answers with Blood Creek. I read there were some differences between writer and director. Schumacher decided to re-write some scenes himself. Would the movie had been any better if Schumacher had not tampered with it? I guess we'll never know. All I know is that the end result was a mess.

Which is actually kind of sad really, because they had the elements for a decent horror movie. The main villain, the Nazi guy, is a pretty cool looking villain. The make up work on the villain is actually really good. He looks like a zombie, feeds like a vampire; his skin regenerates itself with each feeding. And that’s another thing, it’s never really explained if he is a vampire or a zombie. But he feeds on blood to continue living, so I guess he is more of a vampire. Then again, he brings things back from the dead, so right there, there is a connection with the living dead as well. The movie has one moment that I thought was pretty original where the Nazi zombie guy brings a dead horse back to life and turns him into a zombie horse. People shoot the horse with shotguns and he keeps on attacking, then the Nazi dude rides his zombie horse around! Pretty cool visual, if only the rest of the film had as much of originality and energy as these scenes.

Unfortunately, the film decides to hide its faults behind the annoyingly frenetic shaky cam. The film aspires to have a fast pace, which is probably why everybody talks really fast and is always running and doing things  in a hurry. Unfortunately, we can never see what is happening because of the shaky cam and the poor lighting. We need to see what is happening on screen, and if on top of shaky cam you have poor lighting and fast editing, then you will fail to connect with the audience because the audience cannot see what is happening on screen. This is exactly what happens in Blood Creek. It kind of reminded me of Alien vs. Predator: Requiem (2007) which suffered from the same problem. But while the filmmakers behind AVP: Requiem were amateurs, Schumacher is an experienced filmmaker who should have been able to recognize these elements that only serve to bring down the picture.

Unfortunately, Blood Creek was a huge let down. Sometimes, Lionsgate produces a good horror film and then doesnt give it the proper promotional push. Some of their horror movies get a limited release in  theaters and then get dumped on dvd.. They did it with Midnight Meat Train (2008) which was a horror film that deserved a whole lot more exposure then what it got. But Blood Creek isnt one of those good horror films that got mistreated by Lionsgate. This one was just a bad horror film that deserved to be dumped on they way it did by Lionsgate. I was so disappointed to see Joel Schumacher involved in this mess, but I guess it happens to even the best of directors at some point. I’ve still got two Nazi zombie movies that I haven’t seen. One is called The Bunker (2001) and the other one is called Outpost (2008). Let’s hope they are better representations of what a Nazi zombie movie should be like.

Rating: 1 ½ out of 5