Outpost

Stars: Ray Stevenson, Julian Wadham, Paul Blair, Richard Brake, Brett Fancy, Enoch Frost, Michael Smiley, Julian Rivett

Director: Steve Barker

'You know what's gonna happen?' grates the main character in this murky chiller. 'We're all gonna die here.' That's the suspense taken out of that situation, then.

Otherwise, this is a well-made, lowish-budget horror film in which a group of mercenaries is hired to investigate a network of bunkers at an isolated forest clearing in an unnamed eastern European country. The men are soon being picked off one by one by zombie-like Nazi soldiers while, down below in the bunkers, their employer (Wadham) is searching for a machine with which the SS was hoping to create a race of super-soldiers. "This could be the Holy Grail of physics,' he gasps.

Darkly-shot (in Scotland) and drained of most natural colour, this should satisfy fans of the genre well enough, although the fact that we know exactly what's going on does reduce the scare score.

David Quinlan

UK 2007. UK Distributor: Content Films International. Colour by deluxe.
88 minutes. Widescreen. UK certificate: 18.

Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 0, Violence/Horror 2, Drugs 1, Swearing 2.

Review date: 10 May 2008