Worth: $5.50
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Cast:
Beth Dover, Ato Essandoh, Dylan Baker, Becky Ann Baker
Intro:
Torn between providing an honest commentary on the survival of trauma, and diving headfirst into gore and schlock horror, the film succeeds at doing neither.
Director/writer Joe Lo Truglio, best known for playing Charles Boyle in Brooklyn Nine-Nine, makes his feature directorial debut with a film so out of left field, you can’t help but be drawn in by the premise. A woman alone on a mountain top, isolating herself in an attempt to escape her past, only to find herself trapped by her own worst nightmares and cut off from any form of help. It’s an homage to films like The Shining and Secret Window, a drawn-out cat and mouse battle between a woman and her own demons.
Comedians making the transition to horror and doing so to great acclaim is becoming something of a pattern, most notably with Jordan Peele, Zach Cregger and John Krasinski. Sadly, Outpost doesn’t quite live up to the standards set by those who came before. The film is not so much a slow-burn as it is unevenly paced; a drawn-out depiction of Kate’s (Beth Dover) hallucinations that started as a result of her boyfriend’s abuse.
Kate took a job looking out for forest fires in the remote wilderness in an attempt to get far, far away from the source of her anxiety, but you can’t outrun paranoia, and her disturbing visions only become more concerning the longer she’s left alone with her thoughts. Lo Truglio doesn’t shy away from the confronting imagery of Kate’s attack, but what begins as an accurate and discomfiting portrayal of PTSD devolves into something unbalanced and unhinged. Torn between providing an honest commentary on the survival of trauma, and diving headfirst into gore and schlock horror, the film succeeds at doing neither. There’s a downhill slide into cheap thrills and easy jump scares that belittle the unsettling tension and menacing madness that came before.
Rather than waste time on any kind of character development, all we’re getting here is a kind of character deterioration, a melodrama that isn’t half as compelling as it wants to be, with an ending that is less surprise twist and more just plain twisted.
