Outpost Film Analysis

Outpost is a film about immortal Nazis who’s only purpose is to brutally murder those who disturb their rest. In a present day town ravaged by war, a group of Mercenaries led by the x-marine D.C. is hired by a scientist known as Hunt, to take him into a German Bunker in no-man’s land. On entering the outpost they discover a room full of naked corpses they believe to be victems of ethnic cleansing. However they later find out that they are all victems of sick Nazi experiments. They find one alive, clothe him and take turns guarding him. The team are then ambushed by a mysterious army. They are picked off one by one and gruesomely murdered. The team then discover a reel of film deep in the Nazi chambers which reveal that the survivor is an old Nazi general from World War II. It later becomes apparent that the army is a group of Nazi super-humans. They try to stop them but die in the process. The film ends with a second combat team discovering the corpses and the whole process repeating again. The narrative of the film is an unusual one, not following Todorov’s narrative structure. Instead of starting off at equilibrium it starts off with a dilemma or enigma, and almost immediately we see the team of mercenaries setting out on a quest. There is a struggle and after which all the ‘heroes’ die. The film then goes full circle and ends where the film began, initially ending with an enigma. The characters however are more typical of a horror movie. The mercenaries (despite being mercenaries) act as the heroes of the film and the Nazis obviously are the bad guys. However, the mercenaries are a team and there is not really a ‘final hero’. There is also no damsel in distress. In fact there are no official female characters in the film at all, unless you count the refugees and the pole dancer all of whom we only see for a few seconds at the beginning of the film. All of the victims are at the same level, either trying to save each other or save themselves. The audience probably expect what’s coming to them. What we initially see on the front cover is a group of scary-looking un-dead Nazis and what the film is about is a bunch of Un-dead Nazis. The main idea is also given away by the trailer, however we as the audience are still shocked over certain parts of the movie, such as the Nazi Bell, apparitions and possibly some of the torture scenes. Other than possibly the narrative the film displays all of the features of a true horror movie. It contains to start with lots of violence. The ‘bad guys’ are all super natural un-dead Nazis which is always pretty scary. It has lots of gore and the violence is very graphical. It contains lots of close-ups, especially when the goriest violence is happening. For example when the Nazi’s capture their first victim we see a close-up of them sticking empty bullet shells in his eyes. All in all the film features realistic violence jumpy moments, spooky scenes and graphic gory scenes which make the film a horror. In conclusion Outpost quite clearly follows the styles and conventions of the horror genre, whilst successfully following the genres of sci-fi and action. It is also successful in challenging the concepts of the theories of horror films such as narrative structure and some of the character structure.