DVD review (region 1 & 2)
Directed by Steve Barker
Starring Ray Stevenson, Julian Wadham, Richard Brake, Paul Blair
Release date Out now (region 1); 15 September 2008 (region 2)

A shady businessman hires a group of mercenaries to escort him to an old Nazi bunker in Eastern Europe. Once there the troops come under attack from a ghostly force…

OK, so Outpost isn’t the first horror movie to use the set-up of tough-talking soldiers confronting an evil force (see The Keep, Dog Soldiers, Deathwatch and The Bunker amongst many others). But despite the lack of originality, this British chiller is surprisingly well executed, with first time director Steve Barker taking time to develop a genuinely unsettling atmosphere and wisely keeping the Nazi assailants in the shadows for much of the movie.

There are some tense early scenes as the parade of foul-mouthed soldiers of fortune explore the spooky bunker and unearth Nazi memorabilia and naked bodies – only to come across one shell-shocked survivor. This all eventually gives way to an effectively gory stalk ‘n’ slash as the cast are picked off one-by-one by an evil throat-slitting force.

The movie isn’t in the premier league of low-budget horror – the mercenaries are fairly unsympathetic stock characters and the pseudo-scientific explanations are baffling – but the claustrophobic sets and bleak atmosphere make this a scarier prospect than the ridiculous Dog Soldiers. Matt McAllister

VERDICT: 6/10
Outpost squeezes a respectable number of shocks out of its simple premise.