OUTPOST/SCARY PLACE TO VISIT

Some times making a horror movie seems easy. Stick half a dozen people down a dark hole, shut the door behind them, release a few demons and, bingo, you have something that will work.

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Certainly Outpost has fun with this formula.

Here the dark hole is somewhere not very nice in a war torn Eastern Europe, in a forest, with various heavily armed factions everywhere you look.

And the hole is not merely a dark dank place but a labyrinthine bunker left behind by the Nazis and populated with all manner of goblins.

Why would anyone in his right mind go there in the first place?

The answer is: No one would. But, being a horror film, Outpost is not concerned with people in their right minds.

Instead it features a mysterious engineer, usefully named Hunt (Julian Wadham), who is keen to explore this remote bunker for equally mysterious reasons.

He is not completely mad and hires half a dozen crotchety mercenaries for company, starting with hard nut DC (Ray Stevenson).

So far, so good. Indeed, the party actually manage to wend their way through the rival armies in the woods and reach the bunker. But oh what a bad place it proves to be, with no end of frighteners popping out from every corridor and closet.

And the heart of the matter is a nasty machine designed by the Nazi’s to play with the occult, a machine that quickly begins working overtime, with mortal consequences for the visitors.

In short, a very neatly put together 90 minutes of scares.

For the record, Outpost was shot in Scotland, which passes very successfully for Eastern Europe.

The film opens in major cities across the UK on Friday, May 16, 2008.

Posted May 10,2008.