Outpost: Black Sun Blu-ray delivers stunning video and great audio in this excellent Blu-ray release
A NATO task force is deployed to Eastern Europe, where a sinister enemy is mercilessly killing everything in its path. Only Lena, an investigator on the trail of a Nazi war criminal, and Wallace, a physicist who has been chasing Nazi secrets for years, understand that the enemy is the result of an experiment begun during the Nazi era to create "super soldiers". Now, the Thousand Year Reich has emerged from a hidden bunker and restarted the campaign to conquer the world.
For more about Outpost: Black Sun and the Outpost: Black Sun Blu-ray release, see the Outpost: Black Sun Blu-ray Review published by Michael Reuben on November 4, 2012 where this Blu-ray release scored 4.0 out of 5.
Outpost: Black Sun is a sequel, but don't let that dissuade you. It's been so neatly conceived as
a standalone experience that it can be enjoyed on its own terms without any knowledge that a
previous film exists. I mention the first film only to preempt any discouragement by the
inevitable spoilsport who protests that everyone should boycott O:BS until the original Outpost is
released on Blu-ray. There's no need to postpone enjoying a good film.
The Outpost franchise, of which a third entry is now in progress, is (you'll forgive the term) the
brainchild of Black Camel Pictures, the production company of Scottish couple Arabella Croft
and Kieran Parker. Parker's initial story concept involved a group of mercenaries led by a former
British Royal Marine, who had been hired to reconnoiter an abandoned Nazi bunker in Eastern
Europe. What they find are records of gruesome experiments and a lot of undead SS militia.
Parker's concept was expanded into a script by Rae Brunton and effectively directed on a
shoestring budget by Steve Barker, with the Scottish highlands standing in for Eastern Europe. It
helped that Barker was able to recruit a strong lead for the head mercenary: Ray Stevenson,
recently seen on Showtime's Dexter as the icily suave crime boss, Isaak Sirko. Sony picked up
the film for distribution on DVD in the U.S. and, after a successful reception here, gave it a 2008
theatrical release in Europe.
Director Barker had already thought of the idea for O:BS. He'd shot some 16mm footage for the
mercenaries in Outpost to find, purportedly from the last days of the Third Reich. What if, Barker
asked, one of the youthful figures in the background of that footage were still alive today and
intent on exploiting the research created in that ghoulish bunker? From that germ of an idea,
Barker and Brunton wrote an entirely new script, which became O:BS.
In what amounts to a prologue set in present day Paraguay, we meet Lena Jonas (Catherine
Steadman), for whom the pursuit of Nazi war criminals is something of a family business. Her
Moby Dick is a German scientist named Klausener (Philip Barratt, young; David Gant, old). At
the moment, she is seeking information about Klausener from a man named Neurath, himself a
notorious war criminal who commanded a concentration camp. In a bit of stunt casting, Neurath
is played by Michael Byrne, who played the vicious Nazi General Vogel in Indiana Jones and the
Last Crusade. This is neither the last nor the most direct reference to the Indiana Jones franchise
in O:BS. I won't describe the biggest one, but it's elaborate, unmistakable and exceptionally
witty.
Among the vital clues from Lena's South America mission is a map of Europe with a circle
around an apparently unremarkable spot in the east. When Lena arrives there, she finds
unexpected tension, what appear to be NATO forces (their exact loyalties are never clearly
spelled out), and a scientist-adventurer named Wallace (Richard Coyne) with whom she's
previously crossed paths. Wallace shows her the video feed from a NATO scouting party that
didn't survive the encounter with some sort of zombie enemy. A freeze frame shows the face of a
commanding officer who was supposed to have died during World War II. Whatever technology
is responsible for this resurrection, Wallace wants to get to it first. He doesn't trust any
government to behave responsibly once it gains possession of that sort of power.
Lena's map from Paraguay corresponds with satellite readings that show a field of
electromagnetism emanating from the point circled on the map—and expanding rapidly.
Everyone who enters the field gets killed, but Lena and Wallace enter anyway. They encounter
soldiers, who are none too happy to be burdened with civilians, but they end up taking along
Wallace because of his technical skills. Through skirmishes and ambushes, each encounter a
costly one, the group approaches the mysterious bunker. It doesn't give up its secrets easily, not
without fights, casualties, a decent amount of gore and an encounter with some byproducts of
Klausener's experiments that probably weren't part of the original plan.
During this entire time, the electromagnetic field cuts off communications between the team and
its commanders, who have orders to nuke the entire site if the threat cannot be contained by
conventional means. And what of Klausener? We see the elderly man early on, feeble but alert,
and clearly somehow engaged in these proceedings. We know it's him from the distinctive
birthmark under the left eye that the old man shares with the younger self in the footage from
1945. But where the old man is now and what part he's playing remains unknown until the very
end.
Barker derives major production value from the Scottish exteriors, uses digital effects intelligently to add war-torn texture and takes full advantage of
production designer James Lapsley's imaginative bunker sets. The result is to make O:BS feel like a bigger and
more expensive movie than it is. Sharp editing, creative lighting and persuasive acting help sell
the limited make-up effects, and the entire enterprise is a tribute to the inventiveness of creative
minds under the demands of a tight budget. When someone questions why I've given the film
such a high score, the answer is simple: An effective B movie made for almost nothing shouldn't
be judged on the same basis as Lawrence of Arabia. It should be judged on the same basis as
other films that were made for almost nothing (or sometimes more) and aren't worth even ten
minutes of your time.
Outpost: Black Sun was shot digitally. IMDb says that the camera was the Arri Alexa, but the
equipment is less important than the fact of digital capture, which is plain from the image on
Xlrator Media's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray. Although it is possible to capture and manipulate
digital images into something that is almost indistinguishable from film (as, e.g., David Fincher
and Jeff Cronenweth have demonstrated), most digital productions opt for a familiarly
desaturated look, because, among other things, it helps disguise limits in the production budget.
O:BS was shot by Darran Tiernan, who, as a veteran of British TV, is familiar both with digital
cinema and tight budgets.
The Blu-ray's image is clean, free of noise and sharp, except where obscurity is deliberate, either
for storytelling purposes or to conceal something that would break an illusion. Colors are
generally dull and washed out, but in certain key scenes (e.g., the critical finale involving the
"core" of the reanimation machine, or scenes involving Klausener) specific colors have been
brought out in post-production for deliberate effect, primarily icy blue and blood red. Blacks are
solid without crushing, and contrast is never overblown. As this is a digital effort from
acquisition to authoring, the usual analog concerns of filtering and sharpening do not apply.
Compression artifacts were not an issue.
The DTS-HD MA 5.1 soundtrack for O:BS provides some entertaining and impressive support
for the visuals. Firefights, some of them featuring bright tracer bullets, zing through the
surrounds. Deep and tight bass extension accompany the activity of not only the mysterious Nazi
machine, but also the EMP devices with which the soldiers have equipped themselves as a
countermeasure. When one of these is activated, it commandeers the soundtrack for a brief
period; anyone without a subwoofer may want to adjust their settings. A lengthy scene involving
the machine itself causes a cacophony of mechanical, steam and electrical sounds all around, and
another one that's hard to describe except that there's lots of lightning bolts is equally
impressive.
The reanimated Nazi troops make a variety of grunts, groans, shrieks and guttural sounds that are
not meant to be understood but set an appropriate mood. Dialogue between the two principal
characters, Lena and Wallace, is always intelligible, even though both are played by British
actors doing American accents (Lena's is more credible than Wallace's). Most of the other cast
speak with British accents and are perfectly intelligible, with the exception of the soldiers, many
of whom have strong Scots accents that may challenge the ear of American viewers. Don't
hesitate to switch on the subtitles.
The Making of Outpost: Black Sun (480ip; 1.78:1; 5:06): In this EPK, director Barker
and producer Parker discuss the film's origin and production. Through brief, the feature is
informative.
Trailer (1080p; 2.35:1; 2:05): An effective preview.
Additional Trailers (1080p): At startup the disc plays trailers for The Thompsons,
Bigfoot: The Lost Coast Tapes, Greystone Park and Gangsters, Guns and
Zombies. These
can be skipped with the chapter forward button and are not otherwise available once the
disc loads.
O:BS will probably disappoint the hardcore horror crowd, because it's more of a thriller with
horror elements. It has its share of gore, but not to excess and nothing you haven't seen before.
Certainly gore is not its primary mechanism of dread. When the film presents its explorers with
horrific tableaux of bodies piled up left and right, the object isn't to revolt the audience with a
display of gooey entrails. It's to stir up even more unsettling memories of a society that actually
did that to people, one whose iconography is displayed everywhere throughout O:BS's
production design. Like Russell Davies' Torchwood, O:BS uses a science fiction premise, but its
true power comes from the facts of human history. The sci-fi keeps it interesting, but it's the
history that makes it terrifying. Highly recommended.
Director Steve Barker's Screamfest feature Outpost: Black Sun will be released on Blu-ray by specialty publisher XLrator Media. Starring Catherine Steadman (Salmon Fishing in the
Yemen, The Tudors) and Richard Coyle (Prince of Persia, Going
Postal), the film ...
