“The War Is Over, But the Zombies Just Won’t Quit”
If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if Inglourious Basterds got blackout drunk, fell asleep on a VHS copy of Resident Evil, and woke up missing a few neurons, then congratulations—you’ve imagined Outpost: Black Sun.
This 2012 British war-horror sequel to Outpost attempts to be gritty, cerebral, and terrifying. Instead, it’s like watching a bunch of actors wander through an abandoned factory arguing about electromagnetism while a few cosplayers in Nazi uniforms grunt in the background. It’s technically a movie, in the same way a pile of rubble is technically architecture.
Directed by Steve Barker, Outpost 2 doubles down on everything that made the first film mildly enjoyable—only this time it replaces tension with confusion, scares with exposition, and character development with angry shouting. It’s a film about undead Nazis and wormholes that somehow manages to be less fun than a history lecture and less scary than a haunted IKEA.
The Plot: Schrödinger’s Zombie
So here’s the “story,” and I use that term loosely: Lena (Catherine Steadman), a Nazi hunter with a haircut that screams “vengeance and split ends,” is chasing down one of Hitler’s leftover science fair winners. The bad guys, led by the elegantly named Neurath and Klausener, were working on something called Die Glocke—a mystical Nazi machine that bends time, space, and audience patience.
After a round of interrogation that ends with Neurath dying from sheer boredom—or possibly a heart attack—Lena finds a map to the former Yugoslavia. Meanwhile, NATO troops, mercenaries, and a variety of people who look like they answered a Craigslist casting call are battling zombie SS soldiers in an old bunker.
Apparently, the undead stormtroopers are powered by the Black Sun, a Nazi super-project involving electromagnetism, quantum physics, and some truly regrettable CGI. The soldiers are immortal, bulletproof, and allergic to coherent storytelling.
Lena teams up with Wallace (Richard Coyle), a physicist who spends the film explaining the plot to anyone who will listen—unfortunately, that includes us. They join a British SAS team who all speak in interchangeable gruff accents and die in the exact order you’d expect. Eventually, the film reaches its climax: a battle deep in the bunker where Lena smashes a zombie general’s skull while shouting, “For humanity!”
I would have applauded, but my brain had already left the theater in self-defense.
The Characters: Stiff Upper Lips and Stiffer Acting
Our heroine, Lena, is supposed to be a badass Nazi hunter, but she mostly alternates between staring into the distance and grimacing like she’s trying to remember where she parked. Catherine Steadman gives it her all, but the script gives her about as much emotional range as a Call of Duty NPC.
Then there’s Wallace, played by Richard Coyle—remember him as Jeff from Coupling? Here, he’s a physicist who’s seen too much. And by “too much,” I mean the script. His character is the human equivalent of a Wikipedia article: lots of facts, zero charm.
The rest of the cast is basically a pack of redshirts with British accents. There’s Macavoy (the leader who dies heroically), Abbot (the second-in-command who also dies heroically), Hall (the engineer who accidentally kills everyone), and Carlise (the guy you forget existed until his death scene). It’s like Aliens, if Aliens had been rewritten by your uncle who’s really into WWII documentaries.
And let’s not forget the villains: undead Nazi soldiers who shuffle around growling like constipated stormtroopers. The “main” bad guy, SS Brigadeführer Götz, looks like he just walked off a Hellboy cosplay panel. He doesn’t talk much, which is good, because every line of dialogue in this film feels like it was written during a séance.
The Science: Somewhere Between Einstein and Flat Earth
You can tell the writers really tried to make the pseudo-science sound smart. Every other scene involves someone saying “electromagnetic field” or “unified theory” like they’re about to explain the plot of Tenet. Unfortunately, it all comes out sounding like a middle-school science fair gone rogue.
Apparently, the Nazi machine Die Glocke bends space and time, controls electricity, resurrects the dead, and can probably make toast. It’s the kind of plot device that does whatever the movie needs it to do. When the zombies need to be invincible? The field’s too strong. When it’s time for the heroes to win? Someone flips an “EMP switch” and everything explodes.
There’s even a scene where Wallace literally explains how Die Glocke works using runes and “esoteric electromagnetic equations.” I’m pretty sure the equations were just doodles of lightning bolts.
The Action: Call of Duty: Confused Warfare
The action scenes are shot with all the finesse of a toddler holding a GoPro. Every firefight is an incomprehensible blur of muzzle flashes, shaky cam, and quick cuts that would make Michael Bay reach for the Dramamine.
The zombies, when they finally attack, do so with the urgency of men late for a dentist appointment. You’d think an army of undead Nazis would be terrifying, but these guys move like they’re auditioning for The Walking Dead: Senior Edition.
Even the sound design feels exhausted—every gunshot sounds like a damp firecracker, and every explosion looks like it was rendered on a Commodore 64.
There’s one “big” battle where NATO forces try to fend off the zombies while a character sets up an EMP. It’s meant to be epic, but the editing makes it look like a montage of people tripping over rubble.
The Tone: Dead Serious About Being Dead Boring
Here’s the thing about Outpost: Black Sun—it doesn’t realize how ridiculous it is. A movie about Nazi zombies powered by a reality-bending death bell should be fun. It should be pulp, camp, glorious schlock. But Barker directs it like it’s Saving Private Ryan.
Every conversation is delivered in grave, whispery tones, like the actors are afraid to wake the plot. There’s no self-awareness, no wink to the audience—just grim soldiers spouting exposition about “the field strength increasing” while wearing expressions of existential dread.
It’s like watching Doctor Who if every episode ended with everyone dying horribly and the TARDIS exploding.
The Ending: Schrödinger’s Sequel Hook
Just when you think it’s over—after Lena smashes Götz’s skull and shuts down the machine—the movie pulls a final insult. Wallace, the supposed ally, shoots everyone and escapes, setting up yet another sequel no one asked for.
Then Lena calls him on the phone from beyond the rubble to say she’s still alive and coming for him. I half-expected the movie to end with a “To Be Continued…” and a Kickstarter link.
Of course, there was a sequel: Outpost: Rise of the Spetsnaz (2013), which managed to be even worse. Because apparently, Nazi zombies are harder to kill than the franchise itself.
The Verdict: A War Crime Against Cinema
Outpost: Black Sun tries to mix history, horror, and science fiction, but ends up like a bad stew—too many ingredients, none of them cooked. It’s a grim, joyless film about reanimated fascists that somehow has less energy than the corpses it’s depicting.
There’s potential buried deep in there—a cool premise about WWII occultism and government cover-ups—but it’s smothered under dull dialogue, nonsensical plotting, and editing so chaotic it should come with a seizure warning.
Still, I can’t help but admire it just a little. It takes a special kind of audacity to make Nazi zombies boring.
Final Rating: 1.5 Out of 5 Undead Overachievers
Watch it if you love war movies but wish they had more ghosts and less coherence.
Skip it if you value your time, sanity, or basic understanding of electromagnetism.
In short: Outpost: Black Sun proves once and for all that when you dig up the Nazis, all you find is bad writing, bad lighting, and the rotting corpse of logic.
