Both OUTPOST and DEADWATER (aka BLACK OPS on US d.v.d. box) debuted as direct-to-video releases in the US within 70 days last spring. Both low-budget flicks feature heavily-armed squads of U.S.-led special forces veterans battling super-human Nazi ghost officers in exotic locales and being slaughtered to the last man. (The only DEADWATER "survivor" is a demon-possessed woman.) But while OUTPOST's Balkan forest bunker is semi-realistic, the stripped-down S.S. Lane Victory does not give DEADWATER's crew much to work with (check out the "making of" to see how pedestrian the set actually was before some lame-ass CGI was added). To compensate for this obvious budget shortcoming, the DEADWATER group make a couple ghost-busters a ludicrous encumbrance to the SEAL squad led by Capt. John Willets (Lance Henriksen). The ghost-busters' equipment--especially the soon-to-be-possessed female's backpack--look like the kind of crap the video store clerks used as props for their 20-minute shorts in BE KIND REWIND. There is not a plausible moment in this movie, the attempt at a "scientific" explanation falls flat on its face, and Henriksen phones in his effort (which is not helped AT ALL by the coincidence of his only child being a crew member on the torture-brig he's sent to rescue). I mean, c'mon, instead of trying to provide a reasonable explanation for how a WWII Nazi's ectoplasm got bonded to the hull of a ship, try instead to explain WHY the Navy brass decided the best way to investigate this odd phenomenon would be to inexplicably do nothing for 60 years, then pretend to reactivate the never-named vessel as a floating Abu Gharib (a phrase the script uses twice), bring an impostor posing as "the Ace of Spades" super-terrorist to be tortured with teeth-pulling, etc. by unsuspecting U.S. torture contractors, and then--after 80% of the crew is slaughtered, send in even more expensively-trained warriors to get THEM massacred as well (topping it off by towing the demon hulk into a U.S. port and allowing the only survivor to mingle with civilians prior to debriefing or quarantine). If DEADWATER is used as a measuring stick, OUTPOST is 100% believable and its doomed mercenary squad leader D.C. (Ray Stevenson) should get an Oscar.
Review of Black Ops
