OUTPOST: A Swing And A Miss

There isn’t a musician on this planet that sets out to write a terrible song, nor is there an artist with the goal of making a painting that nobody wants to look at. The same goes for filmmakers, no one begins with the intent of making a movie that is hard to root for. Sometimes the best intentions are put forward and things just don’t work out for whatever reason. Themes can be misinterpreted or causes someone might be trying to draw attention to can be overshadowed by the indelicate way they attempt to draw said attention. This is the case for writer and director Joe Lo Truglio‘s Outpost.

As the film begins we meet Kate (Beth Dover) in a restaurant trying to grab a bite to eat when suddenly all eyes are on her. It is a creepy scene meant to let us in on the deeper rooted problems that our main protagonist is dealing with. Kate has clearly experienced a horrible trauma and is suffering from PTSD due to the situation. Slowly as the movie unfolds we learn that she is the victim of domestic abuse and is looking for a clean start and a job that will allow her to confront the demons of her past while giving her time to heal.

Fire on the mountain

Kate’s bestie Nickie (Ta’Rea Campbell) sets her up with a gig working with her brother Earl (played by the great Ato Essandoh) sitting in a fire tower as a watcher. From the very beginning every character that isn’t Kate is drawn to be an incredibly creepy and somewhat threatening figure. Occasionally they let us in on the fact that this is all in Kate’s head and a result of her trauma. On the mountain it is explained that this is a very important position because not too many years ago a fire nearly destroyed the entire area. Kate has to be vigilant.

This is meant to be a three month job where Kate can keep the national park area safe from fire and to heal her wounds but everything goes south from the word jump. First Kate’s ex and cause of her current mental state (Mike, played by Tim Neff) shows up to try and talk about the incident. Kate rightfully fears for her life and runs away, locking herself into the outhouse. Mike gets the idea and leaves on his own, never to be seen or heard from again. The character just showed up to cause tension and set the tone of unease.

That tone definitely runs throughout the entire film, never quite clueing us into what is real and what is imagined by our leading lady, Kate. It’s understood that they wanted to keep those things ambiguous but it comes at the detriment of the viewer. One thing that could have helped sell this entire story would have been a different editing approach. As it was, it was intentionally confusing, and if it wasn’t intentional then I have no explanation. The film plays out in linear order with flashbacks of the incident that set all of this in motion. The issue comes with the intercutting of those scenes and when they chose to show them to us. It made little narrative sense.

One lone shining star

Eventually, Kate makes a couple friends on the mountain, the first being Reggie, played by the always brilliant Dylan Baker. The man is great in everything but in this, he felt a little underutilized. They brought him in to give her some tea and to teach her how to use an ax then sent him to his grandkid’s house until the climax of the movie. The other friend Kate made (and my favorite character in this whole messy thing) was Bertha, played by Becky Ann Baker. She almost had an arc in the film but the scenes she got to be a part of were great. She chewed through the dialogue like the seasoned veteran that she is.

Things keep going horribly wrong and eventually, Kate is convinced that every one that isn’t her is out to get her so she decides to do something about it. Her villain turn was predictable but definitely out of place, using the previous scenes where people were being aggressive and off (in Kate’s mind) as the catalyst to become a serial killer. Everything about the shift was an exercise in sloppy writing and it buried the message that the film was trying desperately trying to convey.

In the final act our once protagonist Kate is transformed into the seemingly deranged antagonist when she goes off the deep end and it is revealed that she has been killing people all along. Bertha is found dead on the road, shot to death by the rifle she was teaching Kate how to use. It’s meant to convey that she had been dead for quite a while so the great party scene we watched between her and Kate never really happened. They desperately wanted to drive home the point that Kate was unwell. Of course, more bodies are found and when Earl and Nickie attempt to confront Kate she tries to kill them too. They leave her locked in the outpost.

Conclusion

This movie had a message that it attempted to deliver about the dangers of domestic violence and how awful that situation is. The problem with Outpost is that it turned our survivor of something horrible into a murderer with no redeeming qualities. Placing all the blame on the character of Kate rather than what drove her to that madness was a mistake and in my opinion in poor taste.

The end of the film gave us a recap of all the bloody carnage and then just as the screen went black it gave us the number for the domestic abuse hotline. A great number to have, so many people suffer tragically from that but turning that situation into a horror movie where the victim decides to murder countless innocent people…? It was a swing and a miss for me.

Outpost will be released on May 19, 2023!

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