It becomes abundantly clear that the first hour, once we get to the “terrible hidden secret”, could have easily been tidied together into a neat 20-minute chunk. It resembles what the film is like as whole – just not worth it. The ending is abrupt and extremely disappointing and utterly not worth the overly long wait to get there. It’s very clear that the writer and director aren’t interested in developing these characters beyond stereotypes and as a result we just don’t care who lives or who dies. Soldier A could have been killed instead of Soldier B and it wouldn’t have made a difference to the viewer. Even the killing and accompanying gory scenes are cut away from right before we see it happen, which becomes infuriating once you realize it’s happening constantly.
Along with its original basic storyline and some creepy and atmospheric moments (notice I said ‘moments’ and not whole scenes) there’s also a small detail which I found to be impressive. There’s a fair bit of gunfire in the movie and the sound effects of the bullets firing was fittingly loud and, as far as I could tell anyway, realistic. It’s little things like this that hold it back from being terrible.
I can’t even recommend Outpost to the film fans to whom it's aimed. There's too little horror to satisfy genre fans, and for anyone else there’s little else to commend it for. This is a strong example of a film looking a hell of a lot better than it actually is.
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