Outpost: Black Sun - Review

Straight to DVD releases are an odd sort of film. You can rarely recommend them due to their low production values and unoriginality - they're quite often just inferior ripoffs of whatever popular cinema trend happens to be making big money at the box office at any particular time. They're always the films on the bottom shelf at your local supermarket with the overly photoshopped cover artwork and ridiculously cliched titles. One would think they might have become obsolete by now due to the competition of blockbuster Blurays and the incredibly cheap prices of mainstream film on DVD, but the direct to shelf releases just keep on coming, whether we want them to or not.

The first Outpost movie had lots of this...

But once in a while, a director with a good idea doesn't get the funding he deserves to make his intended debut masterpiece or alternative horror flick, so his film ends up on these shelves too.
2008's Outpost was one such film. With a budget so small it could barely afford to expand beyond one primary filming location (the producer mortgaged his home to raise £200,000 to fund the movie), and featuring a cast of straight to DVD regulars including Ray Stevenson and consistently typecast psychopath Richard Brake, it wasn't looking as though it would deliver much. But instead, Outpost was a low budget gem steeped in eerie atmosphere, depicting a team of mercenaries hired by a scientist\businessman named Hunt with a top secret agenda to investigate the ruin of a German WW2 bunker in Eastern Europe. There, they discover a machine constructed by the Nazi occult, designed to develop and sustain an army of supersoldiers capable of crushing the Third Reich's opposition. But the Nazi soldiers who were used as experimental candidates for the machine back in the 1940s are still being kept alive by the machine's electro-magnetic field, and like apparitions - not quite alive but not quite dead - they materialise out of the shadows and brutally exterminate each of the protagonists one by one.

...and this...

It may be derivative of the typical 'haunted house' formula so popular in Hollywood, and it certainly gives a nod or two to the famous Wolfenstein video game series, but there's nothing quite so creepy as seeing the shadowy figure of a Nazi soldier in jack boots and trench coat lunging out of the dark with bloodied rifle bayonet in hand. The film is also tightly shot - almost claustrophobic in it's use of enclosed spaces, exaggerated light and shadow - and maintains a suspenseful, serious tone throughout despite its potential to slip into the ridiculous. The antagonists are genuinely quite threatening, and what's more, there's a subplot of corporate/financial betrayal beneath it all (a la Alien) to give the film some unexpected depth. Drawing strength from the fact that the Third Reich did indeed conduct bizarre scientific experiments during World War 2, the film uses this popular conspiracy theory to help root itself in some sort of reality.
For a film with a budget so minuscule, it's remarkably impressive.

...and this

Outpost was bought up and distributed by Sony, and was quite a broad success in terms of straight to DVD film making. It even managed to gain a limited European cinema run after Sony recognised the film's potential, and Director Steve Barker was encouraged to make a sequel once the market for supernatural Nazi horror films was realised. Before long, Barker had written a sequel and a prequel alongside original co-writer Rae Brunton, and production of the sequel - Outpost: Black Sun - began.

With Black Sun being written and directed by the same individuals as the original Outpost movie, you might expect it to be a film of equal quality. I wouldn't be too quick to get your hopes up. I will admit that Black Sun certainly looks like a sequel to Outpost - the same eerie use of exaggerated light and dark dominates the movie. It's certainly shot very well and can't be faulted as far as its visual aesthetic is concerned, but that's where the similarities end.

Outpost Black Sun has some of this...

The tag line of Black Sun is 'War in Hell,' and with a budget quite dramatically increased from the first outing (but still significantly low enough to call this a budget feature), Black Sun literally tries to stage a war against the Nazi supersoldiers within the expanding range of the electro magnetic field. Allied British and American soldiers (the presumable peacekeeping force) battle it out against the undead stormtroopers in woodlands and suburban areas, while our protagonists - a female 'Nazi hunter' and male investigator - try to make it through the 'warzone' alive in order to reach the source of the electro magnetic field - the Nazi machine from the first movie - and shut it down. Ofcourse, everyone else is trying to reach the machine too for their own personal or financial gain, including Klausener, the elderly Nazi scientist who built the machine in the 1940s and wants it back. Apparently, or so we are told, Klausener hired Hunt in the first movie, who was ofcourse attempting to retrieve the machine from the bunker for his employer. And despite us believing that Hunt died at the end of Outpost, Black Sun tells us that he is infact still alive and being used by the undead Nazi force to keep the machine working.

...and some of this...

This is the first and possibly most major problem with Black Sun. There is simply too much going on. The first movie was a simple, tense and elemental horror movie. Black Sun tries to strike up a tale of dramatic action on an epic scale, with obligatory cutaways to military commanders giving orders from field HQs and shady background conspirators. There are too many non-essential characters throughout, and too few developed characters with any real weight. For a film on this budget especially, its own ambition weighs it down.
Another issue is that by bringing the undead Nazi force out of it's bunker, the filmmakers have simply 'bypassed' one of the most crucial devices from the first movie. The stormtroopers no longer materialise from the shadows and disappear at a whim (the previous film describes this as the effect of 'unified field theory.') They now run and sometimes shamble about in broad daylight, waiting to be shot at by nameless, faceless soldier patrols. This departure from the first film's concept is never explained, and therefore the Nazi undead in this movie do not come across as mysterious, supernatural apparitions with the potential to lunge at you from any dark corner. Now they are generic 'Nazi zombies,' and the suspense and horror from the first movie is almost entirely absent. With the atmospheric formula so well balanced in the first entry, I'm genuinely surprised they didn't make a more concerted effort to stick closer to that idea.

..and this

Also disappointing are the two primary cast members. In Outpost, Ray Stevenson hardly delivered an award winning turn, but atleast he had some balls and bravado. In Black Sun, we get Catherine Steadman as Lena the female Nazi hunter, and while she certainly looks the part, her questionable acting/overacting really grated with me. I'm sure she's a capable actress in the right role, but here she feels drastically mis-cast.
Then there's Richard Coyle as Wallace, who is much more convincing in his role but lacks any of the heroism or personality that we expect from a leading male. He is a weak lead, and considering the first film was all about tough men with big guns taking on invincible Nazis, I certainly expected a more dominant male character.
And the group of swearing, grimacing soldiers they encounter midway through the film are lacking much in the way of character development - most of them are there just to act as fodder for the killer Nazis later on, and serve little other purpose. Atleast the mercenaries in Outpost were fleshed out a little bit more and instantly identifiable.
Taking the questionable conclusion to the movie into consideration aswell, which features a climactic scene that I can only describe as Castle Wolfenstein Lite and a plot twist that felt included for the sake of having a plot twist, and I have to say I can't heartily recommend this movie. It just felt like the filmmakers tried to cram too much into one film, and strayed too far from the original formula. It's a sequel to Outpost, but it's almost in a different sub-genre entirely.

This time they're in your Nan's living room

I must admit, I did enjoy seeing the new characters enter the familiar bunker complex from the first film, but that's purely because it was a reminder of how great the original Outpost was. In the latter half of Black Sun, the bunker complex suddenly opens up into a conveniently undiscovered underground stronghold via a hidden elevator. The creators might say this was an expansion of their original vision, now unrestricted by a much larger budget, but the underground stronghold is cliched and full of oddities that begin to stretch the limits of credibility. And the return of Johnny Meres' sinister SS Brigadier General was also welcomed, but the undead Nazi leader is used in barely two scenes, which is a shame since he was one of the more potent elements of the first film.
The film just isn't exciting enough either. When you think about its limited locations and scope, not much happened in the original Outpost film, but the consistent suspense and atmosphere kept it gripping and it maintained a steady pace. Not much happens in Black Sun either, but there's just no tension to fill in the void left by an overstretched narrative. Outpost felt like a substantial blockbuster movie mistakenly released straight to DVD, but Black Sun feels like the direct to DVD shelf is exactly where it belongs. I don't dislike the film, but it just isn't exciting enough to recommend either.

Outpost: Black Sun is an admirable effort from a low budget, independent production team, but ultimately it will be forgotten much more quickly than its predecessor. Unless you absolutely must watch every Nazi themed horror film in existence, you can probably afford to give it a miss. There is a planned prequel on the way titled 'Outpost: Rise of the Spetsnaz,' which will apparently show the origins of the Nazi supersoldier programme and pit the undead troops against Russian special forces. But considering the nature of Outpost and its surprise success, I don't anticipate the prequel will be of the same standard either.
But I encourage you to watch 2008's Outpost at the first available opportunity. It's a creepily atmospheric Nazi themed horror topped off with a quality finish that belies its painfully low budget status, and it's also an incredible lesson in how to make a good movie without Hollywood production values.