Outpost II: Black Sun

The Film

Those of us who look back fondly on exploitation gems like Zombie Lake and Shockwaves, have come to regard the last few years as a bit of renaissance in the whole Fascist reanimation business. Now not all of what's come our way has been great, I hope to avoid seeing Dead Snow again before I die, but even when it's been ropey, senseless, cheap or WTF, it has still been Nazi Zombies and thank the Lord for that. This is why Brits Steve Barker and Rae Brunton deserve your special thanks, because, instead of using our home-grown industry to tell a few shitty jokes in an ensemble puke-a-thon from Mr Curtis or lacing up the bodices of yet more costume dramas, they have served up the fight against stomach munching, beyond the grave extremists.Well the boys are back with a sequel to their 2008 mercenary jaunt to the former Yugoslavia involving that whiny Welsh bloke out of Coupling and the one who wasn't Emily Blunt or Ewan McGregor in Salmon Fishing in the Yemen. So, following on from their first venture we find ourselves back in war torn European nowhere-land with orphaned Nazi Hunter (Steadman) hooking up with adventuring physicist (Coyle) as both chase the lair of living dead national socialists.

To its credit, Outpost 2 doesn't really try to be too clever and vary far from the basic tension and nazisploitation of the first film. Rather than be an ensemble movie though, the drama here is interested with our two central characters and particularly the female lead. Steadman is quite good at managing this focus but her character is basically underwritten and her performance too minor key to provide enough energy, and sadly there are too many moments where she must be reduced to whimpering woman to serve the action. That said, Coyle's is a much more successful role, with enough light and shade to suggest hero one moment and a corrupted soul the next.This shoehorning of the leads into the narrative set up by the original instalment is not really done well enough and the film's coda suggests some continuation of this emphasis in a third film that I would urge the film-makers to reconsider. Still my basic concern with this sequel is that it gives us too little of the Nazis and misses an opportunity to flesh out the back-story of the first film, and this tends to mean that for the most part our zombies only appear functionally and the rich iconography is only really used once we eventually head underground.

Still with a limited budget and Dumfries and Galloway substituting for Yugoslavia, there is plenty to admire in the skill and effectiveness of the crew. The exteriors work well and some of the set design is particularly impressive, and whilst keeping to a 15 rating the body count is impressive if not graphic. The basic issue with a sub-genre piece like this one is the smallish audience it might expect meaning it only receives a smallish budget and I feel it would be unfair to beat up Brunton and Barker for this fact of business. What they have achieved with so little is deeply commendable.So it's not as great as it could have been and certainly not as entertaining as its predecessor, but Outpost 2 is well worth your time.

The Disc

Lionsgate's disc is Region B locked and contains 19.3GB of content, of which the main film takes up 16.5GB. The menus are nicely done playing up the iconography and very simple to use. The sole extra feature is a 36 minute documentary featuring cast and crew discussing the making of the film and showing location footage. This is presented in standard definition and shows just how "method" Coyle is as he refuses to drop his American accent when speaking to camera. It's a reasonable quality featurette and a decent inclusion here.

In terms of AV quality, the transfer is decent with minor evidence of edge enhancement, some grain remaining and a pretty detailed appearance throughout. The palette is muted with a greyish blue hue in the darker night-time and a baked aspect to the sequences underground. Colours are never excessively boosted and black levels can be generally trusted. The sound is offered through a master audio mix which is accurate in terms of the mixing of effects across the channels, strong when ensuring coverage for the music and pretty front-on for dialogue. The result is confident in terms of immersing the viewer but not fully three dimensional with dialogue limited to the centre channel.

Summary

It seems that Outpost is developing into a franchise which is thankfully remaining British. This second entry is good enough and this HD treatment is welcome.

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