Creatures of War #25: Outpost: Black Sun (2012)

Not seeing the vision

Hey hey

I have finally lifted my Outpost: Black Sun DVD from the shelf, popped it in for my peepers to enjoy, and am now here to vomit up some thoughts. In other news, I am back from a much-needed vacation, got rejected from a job¹, and am experiencing the crushing feelings of some unknown impending doom—the usual.

Review

I had a similar facial expression while watching

Spoilers ahead: Outpost: Black Sun picks up where Outpost left off, but one problem with that narrative structure: Steve Barker killed off all the characters in the first movie. To bring us all up to speed, this is the basic plot of Outpost: In an active warzone in Europe,² a group of former soldiers is sent to a mysterious WWII-era bunker to do some mysterious stuff. They encounter some nazi-zombies (or ghosts???), a mysterious machine that does mysterious stuff, and get taken out by the zombies. Black Sun attempts to expand on the existence of this machine and what these zombies have been up to post-Outpost. Black Sun introduces us to Lena, a nazi-hunter who is tracking down war criminals. She teams up with a shady scientist named Wallace and follows the trail of her nemesis to the site of the first Outpost film. Okay, spoilers over.

Black Sun certainly looks better than its predecessor, but it completely fails as a competent sequel. What I enjoyed about Outpost was its limited nature. The one location and the tension of dark hallways are what carried my attention. Once we breach the concrete bunker and emerge into the daylight, all that tension disappears. Black Sun is too complicated by a mile. The production was given a larger budget, and they ran with it. Black Sun is crammed with lore, locations, names, ideas, potential, but I don’t think it ever fully forms. I don’t want more lore, I don’t want more information, what I want is more scares, blood, and a compelling story. Black Sun gives me none of this. It’s so bogged down by its own attempt at worldbuilding that it cannot be consistent. Why do the zombies stab people instead of bite? What is the ultimate goal of the bad guys? If Lena is a nazi-hunter, why is she written like a damsel in distress? I almost feel like the Outpost movies are in the wrong format. A comic series would probably allow Barker to expand his world in a way that makes sense. While I was never bored watching Black Sun, I drifted along in a kind of mildly uninterested haze. There was nothing to sink my teeth into, but also nothing to really put me off. Not goofy bad, not technically bad, but never rises above a “meh”. Much like the machine in the film, all the potential in Black Sun is laid out before you, but utterly incomprehensible without a key to decode it.

The fun part about having the physical copy of Black Sun is that I get the Making of Outpost: Black Sun segment. It is short, about 6 minutes, and mostly contains casual interviews with the crew, split with random moments of the resulting film. It’s like someone just edited the interview segments into a trailer of the movie and called it good. I thought it was funny that most of the interviews were just down moments during filming. An actor sitting in a little chair in costume in a dark, creepy room, looking very tired, trying to explain how important this nazi-zombie movie is. Unironically, this was my favorite part of the film. While I thought the actors seemed less than enthused, Steve Barker and company clearly adore these movies. Sure, I was not a fan of their movie, but I’m so glad they got to make it.

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Treasure Maps

Photo by Stephen Monroe on Unsplash

Outpost: Black Sun has a lot of something I love, and that is maps. A former cartographer, all I wish for in this life is to make maps. Paper maps, digital maps, fake maps, informative maps, stupid maps, who cares. Cartography is a strange field. People view it as practically dead, but it’s becoming increasingly relevant³. Creating maps is objectively a cool job, and with limited opportunities available, you’ve got to push your way into the field. Sure, everyone is very open and friendly and willing to teach you anything you want to know, but it’s competitive all the same. I said I was a former cartographer, but that’s not entirely true. I shoved my way in and suddenly found myself shoved out again. I guess I am still a cartographer, just in a more limited capacity. I’m trying to claw my way back, but with little success. I talk about work a lot, mostly because it’s the largest part of my life at the moment. I’ve found myself in a period of extreme loneliness, unhappiness, and overall just a deep feeling of being misplaced. I cannot distance myself from my work, a work that is mostly not maps, I take it all with me. I cannot think of anything else. I am finding it impossible to make friends, and the ones I have, I find myself fearing their departure from me. I can’t help the irrational feeling of being left behind. What am I left with? A customer service job that I willingly took, no local friends, no local family, and a nazi-zombie blog? I’m not trying to get all sad here, but I have always been an analytical person. I want to look at the whole picture and see where I need to go. This is where I am, where do I want to be? I can’t say I know that either. I’m in need of something like a treasure map. My goal is laid out before me, hidden in plain sight. It’s not obvious, and it’s frustrating to find. I’m making many wrong turns, and I may have to traverse the whole map blind, but I’ll find that X marks the spot eventually. Just takes some time.

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Bye

Do I recommend Outpost: Black Sun? Not really. If you liked the first one, you may find some enjoyment in Black Sun. There is a third movie that is whispered to be better than Black Sun, so I guess I’ll commit myself to giving the series one more shot.

Bonus

Here are movies that I’d watch instead of Outpost: Black Sun:

• The Damned (2024): Just saw this, I thought it was decent

• Any X-Files episode

• Pandorum (2009): I am once again recommending Pandorum (2009). If you hate it, don’t tell me, I’ll be heartbroken.

1. It’s okay though, it was not a good fit and I would have turned it down if it was offered (or would I have? I’m kinda desperate, not gonna lie).

2. Okay, but what time period specifically? What war is currently happening? Couldn’t tell you. Likely it’s explained in the first film, but I did not feel like rewatching it, so I won’t count my confusion against Black Sun.

3. Gulf of Mexico Gulf of Mexico Gulf of Mexico Gulf of Mexico Gulf of Mexico Gulf of Mexico