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Review by Nia Edwards-Behi

Editor’s note: following on from Steph’s review, here’s another look at the film from Nia. Two reviews of the same film back-to-back might seem like overkill, but Nia has so much to say on the subject, how could we decline? Just call us the Soskas Appreciation Society – and beware of spoilers after the bloody pic.

Back in May, I described American Mary as the most original film I’d seen for a very long time. Months later, and having watched a great deal of upcoming horror films in my capacity as a festival programmer, I can say the statement stands. The film has just received a special preview screening at London’s Fright Fest, having been picked up by the wonderful folk at Universal, where it deservedly met a rapturous reception. I’ll be the first to admit that there’s a possibility that I’m somewhat blinkered when it comes to the Soskas. I’m lucky enough to be able to call the twins my friends, but regardless of that, I believe American Mary to be an important and vital horror film. Modern horror cinema seems to have entered the era of found footage and ordeal horror, and the obsession with remakes lingers on still. When a truly good horror film comes along, it shines all the brighter, not only for being wonderful in and of itself, but for having the guts to break away from its already stagnant peers. Such a film is American Mary.

Mary Mason (Katharine Isabelle) is a promising medical student training to be a surgeon. Facing increasing financial difficulties, Mary searches for jobs for which she’s far over-qualified. Attending an interview with Billy (Antonio Cupo), a local strip-club owner and gangster, Mary finds herself able to make a quick wad of cash in exchange for practising her burgeoning surgical skills. Word gets out of Mary’s underground slicing, and she is unwillingly recruited by Beatress Johnson (Tristan Risk) to help her friend, Ruby RealGirl (Paula Lindberg), who desires unusual surgery. Still desperate for money, Mary agrees. When the medical community she longs to join betrays her, Mary finds herself a new career performing body modifications – some on unwilling victims. Though most of her clients bring her financial security and admiration for her work, Mary finds herself increasingly thrown into a dark and uncontrollable world.

Although worlds apart, there are two ways in which American Mary and its predecessor, Dead Hooker in a Trunk are comparable. Both tell highly interesting and original stories, while at the same time paying homage to the genre. In Dead Hooker that originality came from the characters themselves, all of whom were somehow sympathetic and sweet, despite being purposefully two-dimensional in nomenclature and superficial behaviours. Otherwise the film was a spot-on homage to grindhouse exploitation filmmaking, in tone and in production. American Mary pays as much homage to classic monster movies as it does to body horror and Asian horror; while offering an original monster-heroine and a story I can’t say I’ve ever seen before. Without even broaching the film’s content, though, it is technically brilliant. From its production design, to its performances, to its soundtrack, American Mary is a beautifully put together film.

At the film’s core is Katharine Isabelle’s truly remarkable performance as Mary. She is simultaneously self-assured and vulnerable – on the one hand defiant when she’s told off in class, on the other nervously smoothing out her clothes when trying to impress. This duality is what’s preyed on by those who should be nurturing her talent, and in many ways they light the spark that creates the monster. Although eventually monstrous, Mary is never terrifying. It’s fully clear why other characters in the film are frightened of her, but as an audience member we are not invited to be scared of her. We see so much of Mary that it is always possible to sympathise with her. This is down to the wonderful performance, and the wise choice to allow Isabelle to gesture, rather than speak Mary’s complexities. Indeed, a lot of Mary’s dialogue is darkly funny, and Isabelle boasts some wonderful comic timing in the film.

Isabelle’s is not the only remarkable performance in the film, however. A stand out from an array of secondary characters is Tristan Risk as Beatress Johnson. Beatress has literally transformed herself into Betty Boop, through cosmetic surgery, altering her voice, and perfecting her mannerisms. Risk’s performance, under heavy prosthetic make-up, is a delight, as she not only performs the mimicry of Boop, but performs the character of Beatress too. Initially seeming harmlessly deranged, Beatress slowly reveals herself as not quite so innocent. She’s a hugely likeable character, however, and Risk’s performance is revelatory. Beatress is also very funny, one hysterical c-bomb getting its own round of applause from the FrightFest audience. The rest of the supporting cast is strong, with notable performances from David Lovgreen, Twan Holliday, Paula Lindberg and John Emmett Tracy.

The film’s production design complements its performances. Dark yet playful, the film’s sets, locations and costumes emphasise and underline the action. The best example of this is through Mary’s costumes. Stylish from the outset, Mary increasingly boasts an array of specially designed work wear – from red surgical scrubs to a latex butcher’s apron. Likewise Mary’s apartment begins life as a quirky homestead, but soon makes way for her work, to the point where she moves to live elsewhere in order to better support her life, and gone is any sense of homeliness. Completing the film’s feel is a great soundtrack, packed with great songs, some expected horror scoring, and an absolutely inspired use of Ave Maria.

As I’ve said, as well as being technically wonderful, American Mary pays tribute to other horror films and traditions in a subtle way. It’s apt that the film has been picked up by Universal, as Mary herself is, in many ways, a classic horror monster. She’s sympathetic and she’s vulnerable – and she’s deadly. If Robin Wood’s argument that in classic horror the monster and the heroine – and that’s heroine, not protagonist – are allowed moments of recognition in each other, then in Mary we see both, combined, and she is the one who drives the story. There is another wonderful way in which American Mary plays with horror conventions, but it involves a fairly hefty SPOILER, so beware the two paragraphs below.

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER

Mary is drugged and raped by her tutor, Dr. Grant (David Lovgreen), when he invites her to a sleazy sex party after assuming that her new found income is because she has become a prostitute. Dr. Grant is the first to face Mary’s wrath at the tip of her scalpel, as she makes vengeful use of her new-found body modification skills. However, this is no conventional rape-revenge plot. Normally, in rape-revenge films, the rape occurs, often protractedly, and is followed by a definitive and lethal revenge. Mary does not murder Dr. Grant. Rather, she subjects him to a long, drawn-out, living nightmare as she changes his body entirely and irreversibly. If the fairly definitive revenges taken in traditional rape-revenge narratives might be equated, figuratively, with the lack of focus on the aftermath of rape in its depiction in film, then the revenge element of American Mary very much seeks to readdress this huge imbalance. The depiction of rape in horror films seemed to have become something of a hot topic during FrightFest, with many other films screened at the festival seemingly doing it very, very wrongly. It seems to me that increasingly rape is often used now in horror films as a throw away plot device or a useful tool for making a bad guy seem worse. This is not remotely the case with American Mary, whereby Mary’s assault is committed by someone she knows and trusts, who has been depicted as a well-meaning, even nice (albeit stern) tutor. Given recent reprehensible comments regarding rape by politicians in the USA and the UK, and undoubtedly elsewhere, this factor seems to me to be incredibly pertinent and important.

Following on from the above, the frequent and traditional depiction of law enforcement in post-1970s horror as being mostly incompetent is done somewhat differently in American Mary. Often this incompetence is portrayed through disinterest, lack of skill, or corruption in the police force or judicial system. Detective Dolor (John Emmett Tracy) is thorough and well-meaning. It is only through Mary’s lack of co-operation that he is rendered incompetent. He’s an important character in this respect, in that he’s probably the only male character with significant screen time in a position of authority who doesn’t abuse that position. Other characters are protective and respectful of Mary – particularly Lance (Twan Holliday), in some rather wonderful scenes – but they too are fairly marginalised or low on any sort of traditional societal ladder. Detective Dolor is important, then, insofar as he ensures that the film is never dealing in black and white depictions of what type of person is good and what type of person is bad.

END SPOILER END SPOILER END SPOILER

Body modification plays a huge role in American Mary and it’s testament to the Soskas’ professionalism that they never once portray the community in a way that is disrespectful. This isn’t a film that uses a community or a subculture as a cheap gimmick, but embraces it, consults it, and portrays it as entirely healthy. It’s refreshing to see such due care and attention paid in a film like this. As well as the real body modifications seen in the film, there are, of course, those less consensual modifications and surgeries that take places. The defiantly practical effects on display in the film are glorious, the work by MastersFX truly impressive.

The final scene of American Mary is incredibly clever and surprisingly moving, reflective of a subtle thread of truth that has run throughout the film about Mary. Although she can save lives as a surgeon and allow others to fully express themselves through performing body modifications, she ultimately cannot fix herself. That being said, American Mary is in no way a downbeat film. It’s challenging without being an endurance test. It’s funny without being silly. It’s sexy without being gratuitous. Jen and Sylvia Soska have cannily made a second film that is nothing like their first. They completely defy expectation, and have made a film that is leaps and bounds ahead of many, if not most, of its peers. American Mary is ultimately mature, intelligent and subtle without being in any way boring, and is at all times entertaining. With this film, Jen and Sylvia deserve every single success that I’m sure is headed their way.

Look out for American Mary on the festival circuit over the coming months, ahead of a release early next year.

Review by Stephanie Scaife

Although my time at FrightFest was brief this year, I did manage to catch Jen and Sylvia Soska’s eagerly anticipated follow up to their cult debut Dead Hooker in a Trunk (2009), American Mary. This time they’ve forgone the B-movie aesthetic and produced something altogether more polished and unusual: a surreal surgical horror, a contemporary take on the genre that has produced the likes of Georges Franju’s macabre classic Eyes Without a Face (1960). This is without a doubt a tricky subject matter to tackle, and the girls attack it with an impressive amount of gusto.

Mary Mason (Katherine Isabelle) is a med student with serious financial woes and as a last resort she applies to an online ad for work as a masseuse at a seedy strip club. Chance would have it that during her interview with the owner Billy (Antonio Cupo) one of his lackeys has taken things one step too far and she’s offered cold hard cash, no question asked, to stitch up a badly wounded man. Mary is reluctant at first; but it not only offers her a way to hone her skills as a surgeon but to earn $5000 without having to massage skeezy dudes in her underwear.

Not long afterwards a dancer from the club by the name of Beatress shows up at Mary’s apartment asking her to consider doing more under-the-table surgical procedures. Beatress herself is a piece of work; surgically altered to the extreme in a bid to look like 1930’s cartoon character Betty Boop, and is played with aplomb by Canadian Burlesque dancer Tristan Risk, who comes close to stealing the entire film. Initially Mary is reluctant to get involved in this bizarre and illegal underworld of extreme plastic surgery and body modification, but the money proves too appealing and she agrees to meet with Beatress’ friend Ruby RealGirl (Paula Lindberg) who wants to turn herself in to a real life doll. The results of which will undoubtedly make even a seasoned horror fan squirm.

Due to tragic circumstances Mary is forced to quit med school and as a result she delves deeper into this world of specialist surgery, and when I say body modification I don’t mean piercings or tattoos; this is more along the lines of voluntary amputations and the like. Together with Billy, who is equally scared and enthralled by Mary, and Beatress who ultimately is as close as Mary comes to having a friend, she carves a niche for herself that becomes increasingly lucrative and dangerous until things spiral out of control both for Mary and those around her.

There are many things to admire about the Soska’s sophomore effort. It looks fantastic for a start thanks to cinematographer Brian Pearson, and the acting is top notch especially by Katherine Isabelle who plays Mary as an impenetrable ice-queen who is clearly one step away from falling into the abyss, along with the aforementioned Tristan Risk and a uniformly strong supporting cast. American Mary is also not entirely what I’d expected, and I would say that it benefitted as a result. What I got was something altogether unusual, a world where people do not look or act like you’d expect. As much as I hate to use this term, it really is the best way to describe the characters in the film: they are undeniably Lynchian, providing something that is on one hand completely believable but on the other entirely unimaginable. This in itself is American Mary’s strong suit, and by giving the audience this surreal feeling of the uncanny it often results in unexpected but not unwelcome humour.

I’d strongly recommend American Mary, although it’s not without its flaws; at times it feels particularly rushed, and some plot lines either peter out or are left unexplained, whilst time is freely given to somewhat unnecessary scenes, such as the Soskas’ own cameo, which is amusing but doesn’t exactly aid the plot any. Although of course being left wondering at the end of a film is not altogether a cause for concern and my gripes are minor when as a whole American Mary is a successful and fun oddity that doesn’t patronise its audience or the subject matter, and gives us something entirely original in a genre that is often tired and predictable, so for that I take my hat off to the twins. Their enthusiasm and excitement for the genre and for what they do is infectious and as young, female filmmakers who don’t take themselves too seriously they are a breath of fresh air. I see many great things for them in the future. I for one can’t wait to see what they do next.

American Mary is set for a UK release in early 2013 from Universal – and this is not the last you’ll be hearing of it at Brutal As Hell.

Review by Ben Bussey

Film is a powerful and mysterious thing. No wonder it becomes an obsession for so many of us, as it affects us in ways we do not completely understand, by means that are often completely unknown to us. For this reason, there can be a particuar potency to films which centre specifically on the medium of film itself, and the means by which it is put together. Whilst such works can on the one hand serve to demystify film by exposing the mundane realities behind the grand illusion, they may also wind up making the medium seem more bizarre and truly magical than ever. Such is the case with director Peter Strickland’s Berberian Sound Studio, the haunting and perplexing account of a humble English sound engineer going out to work on an Italian film about witchcraft and witch hunters, and the psychological toll of this work.

It is the late 70s. Gilderoy (Toby Jones) is a mild-mannered, middle-aged, very down-to-earth sound engineer who generally works on such inoffensive fare as nature documentaries and children’s television shows. However, as we join him he is arriving at the Italian studio of the title to work on the latest film from director Santini (Antonio Mancino). Everything about the situation is worlds apart from Gilderoy’s usual filmmaking experience; the language, the informality, the beautiful young people, the hints of hedonism, the unfettered emotion, and most worrying of all the extreme reluctance to pay for anything, including his travel expenses. But perhaps the biggest shock to the system is the content of the film itself. Gilderoy finds himself spending all day every day recording hour after hour of blood-curdling screams and grisly sound effects: splattering watermelons to simulate stabs, beheading radishes to simulate hair being pulled out, pouring oil in a hot pan to simulate burning flesh. But while the film takes over his life, Gilderoy remains an outsider in Santini’s circle, witnessing the tensions building in-house yet remaining separate from it all, particularly as he doesn’t speak Italian. Under such alienating circumstances, the line between what is real and what is imagined inevitably begins to blur.

This makes for an interesting film to screen the day after the remake of Maniac. Although the two films are far removed in tone and content, they both challenge the audience by highlighting key aspects of film; whilst Maniac makes the viewer contemplate the role of the camera, Berberian Sound Studio naturally makes us contemplate the role of sound. The key trick (if want to call it that) is that, aside from its opening titles, not a single frame of Santini’s film is actually seen, so that all we get is the audio and how it is created: the lurid music, looped-in dialogue, coldly detached descriptions of the onscreen atrocities, and of course the bizarre sound effects created by Gilderoy and his co-workers. We have actors coming into the sound booth who seem like the most ordinary people in the world, until they provide the voices of whispering witches and ‘aroused goblins.’ This alone makes Berberian Sound Studio truly fascinating, and surely even more so for diehard fans of the kind of 70s Italian horror that is being paid tribute to (although, watch out for Santini’s reaction when Gilderoy flippantly describes it as horror…). Also, as Strickland revealed in the Q&A, the methods and equipment used are accurate to the period, and many of these were indeed used to provide the film’s sound effects.

Describing the plot in detail is largely pointless. There’s a rather Kubrickian approach taken here, as the driving force really isn’t the narrative; Strickland is more interested in getting us under Gilderoy’s skin, prompting us to feel what the character is feeling, and as such if we wind up largely bemused and disorientated by what we are experiencing – well, job done. But the further we get into the running time (which, happily, is not over-indulgent), the more things dissolve into a state of Lynchian weirdness. There’s a definite Mullholland Drive quality to the conclusion, which I will say nothing more on as a) I don’t like spoilers and b) if I’m entirely honest… I didn’t really get it. I think this is one of those films you need to watch at least twice and really reflect heavily upon before you can completely make sense of it. However, I get the sneaky suspicion that if you dig deep enough, there really are answers to be found here, unlike some films from recent years which took a cryptic approach only to hide a hollow core (coughkilllistahem).

The only other key thing to add is that, if the option is available, Berberian Sound Studio is a film that you really should try to see on the big screen. As a Q&A participant quite rightly emphasised, seeing it at the Empire Leicester Square, plunged in darkness with a top-of-the-range sound system and a screen that’s only a whisper shy of IMAX size, Berberian Sound Studio makes for a truly intense, immersive sensory experience, the likes of which you really can’t recreate at home. It’s also well worth noting that, whilst I may have made it sound like a totally cold experience in alienation, Berberian Sound Studio is not without a sense of humour, wringing some good fish-out-of-water laughs from Gilderoy’s discomfort amidst all the Italianness. So you will have fun, as well as being driven to reassess your relationship with film and the way it interacts with your consciousness. Confrontational, experimental filmmaking with heavy duty metaphysical musings aplenty, but still a few shits and giggles along the way; where you can go wrong?

Berberian Sound Studio is in UK cinemas from Friday 31st August, via Artificial Eye.

Review by Ben Bussey

Remember a time when we didn’t instinctively hate every remake that came along the second it was announced? I’m guessing that’s going to be a stretch for many of us, given it’s been near enough a full decade since some bunch of upstarts thought they could make a bit of money off the title The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and from there on the floodgates were open to revisit almost every major horror hit from the past forty-odd years. Yet for all the fan rage these remakes have inspired, they’ve also raked in the cash, hence there remains no end in sight to the trend. Grrr.

But I ask once more: does anyone remember when that wasn’t the case? When an older film could be remade without fear that it would in some way sully the legacy of the source material? When there still seemed a good chance that it would do what all the best remakes are supposed to: offer a significantly different take on the concept, with a unique and singular vision that makes it truly stand apart? If we can hold back the vitriol we might even admit that a few of the modern remakes have achieved just that, and one filmmaker who has been involved with some of the best of them is of course Alexandre Aja. Whilst this time around it is not him behind the camera but Franck Khalfoun, we can chalk up another victory to Team Aja on the remake scorecard. Better yet, we can almost certainly hold up this new version of William Lustig’s Maniac as the best remake Aja has been involved in to date. (And how awesome is it that a guy with a name so close to that of the protagonist should take the reins of this film, particularly given the unique approach we will soon get into?)

The set-up here is basically identical to that of Lustig’s notoriously grim and grimy slasher. Frank (Elijah Wood, a wonderfully unexpected replacement for Joe Spinnell) is the owner of a vintage mannequin store, inherited from his late mother. Alas, the store and its contents are not the only thing she left her little boy with; there’s the small issue of some monumental mommy issues, which manifest themselves in the worst possible way, driving Frank to stalk, kill and steal the scalps of beautiful women. However, things seem to change when a new woman enters Frank’s life: a photographer named Anna (Nora Amezeder taking the role previously played by Caroline Munro). Whereas most people find Frank’s line of work – and by extension Frank himself – to be very weird and rather pointless, Anna has a deep appreciation for what he does, and this promises to blossom into a warm relationship. Unfortunately, Frank’s just not that good at relationships that don’t end up in him stabbing, choking and/or beating the other person to death. Can this change, or is Anna walking into a world of pain? Yes, that’s a rhetorical question…

So far, so essentially identical to what went before. The thing that really makes Khalfoun’s Maniac stand apart is that it is shot in a really unique way: almost entirely from the point of view of Frank, with Elijah Wood’s face only showing up in reflective surfaces, flashbacks, dream sequences or the occasional moment which I guess we can call out-of-body experiences. On paper, the idea of this motif being maintained for the duration of a full-length film sounds very gimmicky indeed, not to mention dangerously close to that other horror cause célèbre, the found footage genre. The fact that it actually works is a very pleasant surprise.

Well, maybe ‘pleasant’ isn’t the right word to use here; for make no mistake, Khalfoun’s film easily matches Lustig’s for brutality, ugliness and just plain dirty, scummy atmosphere. Moving the action from the mean streets of turn-of-the-80s New York to the back streets of 21st century Los Angeles (at least, I think that’s where it was shot – correct me if I’m wrong), in many respects the film feels like a semi-sequel to Drive given the amount of action seen from a car window, and the emphasis on eerie/soothing synth music. But when the shit hits the fan, it hits hard. The murder scenes are harsh, unrelenting and graphic, and given the perspective the viewer is brought closer into the horror than many films have ever done. I don’t know if it’s been by the MPAA yet, but if the full uncut version which we saw here manages to get an R I will be very taken aback.

The original pushed the boundaries of what slasher audiences were prepared to take pleasure from, and this remake will doubtless do the same. I really do think this will be a ‘hardcore horror fans only’ deal; without being condescending, casual viewers will surely find the overriding bleakness and brutality just too much. It’s for this reason that I’m willing to forgive the few slightly cheesy, tongue-in-cheek nods to the original, notably moments in which the iconic poster is recreated, and when one of Frank’s victims-in-waiting, when describing how she had imagined he would look, basically describes Joe Spinnell. There’s also a famous music cue from another celebrated psycho killer movie that comes up which I was initially put off by. However, these few moments of relative levity are most definitely needed to keep things from winding up just too grim. Once again, let there be no mistake that this film is every bit as grisly, unpleasant and devoid of any redemptive overtones as its predecessor was. But if you’re prepared for that, it’ll take you on quite a ride.

Maniac will be released in France on December 26th, and Germany the following week; no US or UK distribution plans have been announced yet.

Review by Ben Bussey

Send in the clowns. They’re a classic for creeping you out, aren’t they? Be they killers from outer space, phantoms that live in the drains or weird old guys carrying the dubious title of Captain, those red-nosed, white-faced bastards with painted-on smiles have been putting the shits up us all, young and old, for time immemorial. But while they’re good at being scary, one thing clowns hardly ever are is genuinely funny. Well, at long last here comes a contender who might prove the exception to the rule, managing to be as amusing as he is alarming: Stitches the clown, immortalised in the form of British comedian Ross Noble in this new film from director Conor McMahon. It’s one of those horror movies that doesn’t come within a thousand miles of rewriting the rule book, but you wind up having too much fun to care; a good old-fashioned splatstick slasher, with gore gags that Sam Raimi would surely approve of.

So just what kind of a sleazy clown is this Stitches, you ask? Well, we first meet him in full costume slamming his girlfriend from behind in his cliff-top caravan while she cries “fuck me clown.” Nuff said, I think. Moments later he’s on his way to provide the entertainment at the tenth birthday party of Tom. But everyone’s a critic, and kids these days just aren’t impressed with the classics, and soon enough they pull a little prank which – wouldn’t you know it – goes horribly wrong. In no short order Stitches is an ex-clown and Tom is one very messed-up little dude. Six years pass, and the now adolescent Tom (Tommy Knight) is no less messed up, and no less hung up on his neighbour Kate, who’s grown into an almost-Christina Ricci lookalike (Gemma-Leah Devereux). With his mum out of town over his sixteenth birthday, naturally the old gang talks him into throwing a party; and when would be a better time for Stitches to return from the grave to finish his party routine?

Yes, the plot is simple. Yes, the characters are the basic archetypes: nervous male lead, sensitive female lead, obnoxious mate, camp fat kid, mean bitch, bury-me-in-a-Y-shaped-coffin girl, and so on and so forth. But innovation is not the name of the game here. This is midnight movie fodder, hence FrightFest gave it the late slot which it fit like a glove (or oversized shoe). It’s a standard set-up you can more or less sing along to; the real trick is how the little flourishes they come up with work. And the real ace up the sleeve here is the lead actor. Ross Noble does sterling work as the sour-faced clown out for blood (as well as doing a bang-up job warming up the FrightFest audience prior to the screening), and the progressively ridiculous methods of dispatch that McMahon and co-writer David O’Brian cook up for him are delightfully daft, and always accompanied by a pithy pun, recalling Freddy Kruger at his hammiest (and I mean that in a good way). We’ve got guts, brains and other assorted organs spilling onto the screen in abundance, and one of the very best eyeball gags I’ve seen in a long time; think Fulci by way of Ren and Stimpy.

Honestly, there’s not a huge amount else to say. The teen cast (and from the look of them, this lot really are still in their teens, so for the older viewers amongst us there’s the potential to feel really old watching this) are well-served by the script, and handle themselves well; it’s very much to their credit that you don’t actually want to see them slaughtered in the first five minutes as can often be the case in slashers. I do have to cast doubts as to whether today’s sixteen year olds would sing along en masse to ‘I Just Died In Your Arms Tonight’ (even though it’s a funny moment) and I would also have to question the logistics of a single hash cookie containing the equivalent of 40 joints as is claimed, but I’m just nitpicking now. Stitches is 90 minutes or so of good gory fun, and nothing more; but sometimes, you need nothing more.

Stitches is set for a UK release on 26th October, from Kaleidoscope.

Review by Ben Bussey

Man, it seems a long time since Outpost came out. With the killer concept of hard-as-nails 21st century soldiers taking on undead Nazi stormtroopers, it was a film that seemed destined for cult status; however, for this writer at least it fell some way short of meeting its full potential. Now, over four years later, the long-promised sequel has arrived, and like most sequels it broadens the scope of the series, with returning director and writer team Steve Barker and Rae Brunton taking things onto a wider playing field than its claustrophobic predecessor. The result is a film that isn’t so bleak and testosterone-fuelled as the original, which to my mind winds up as a slightly more rewarding experience.

Our main protagonist here is Lena (Catherine Steadman – hence the film’s comparative lack of testosterone). Whilst at first glance she might seem like a cut-price Maggie Gyllenhall, she actually boasts the rare and rather kick-ass title of Nazi hunter, following in the footsteps of her late father to track down the last remaining geriatric goose-steppers who all but destroyed her family. Her efforts lead her into the same neck of the woods which that ragtag bunch of mercenaries found themselves in last time around. Running into an old colleague, physicist Wallace (Richard Coyle), Lena learns that the war crimes of the man she is looking for go far beyond the concentration camps. Soon enough Lena and Wallace are caught in the middle of a British Special Forces operation to locate and disable the machine within the outpost which makes the undead Nazis invulnerable, and between the two of them they just might have what it takes to help make the mission a success.

It’s not what I’d call a rip-roaring success – if, like me, you didn’t care much for the original then you’re still not likely to care all that much about what happens here – but even so, Outpost II makes for a reasonably entertaining 90-odd minutes. Key to its success is the slight shift in tone. It doesn’t exactly veer off in a radical new direction, but it does de-emphasise the horror somewhat in favour of a pulpy adventure/thriller tone: with its brainy protagonists following clues and exploring mysterious places with a hint of mystical goings-on, there’s more than a spoonful of Indiana Jones in the mix (indeed, one moment toward the end is a very blatant homage to one of the most notorious scenes in Raiders of the Lost Ark). Or, perhaps Tomb Raider might be a better frame of reference, given that our main protagonist is a modern woman charging into the shadowy realms of history. Alas, rather than adopting the Lara Croft approach, Catherine Steadman’s Lena winds up yet another disappointingly ineffectual female lead. An opening confrontation with an aged SS officer (whose casting offers another tip of the hat to Indy) is clearly meant to establish her as tough and ruthless, which you would assume a person to be if they travelled the world hunting Nazis; yet when the shit hits the fan she’s every bit as feeble as women tend to be portrayed in genre fare, largely unable to look after herself and dependent on the soldier boys to protect her. Also, given that both Steadman and Richard Coyle are in fact British, it’s a little grating that both are cast as American characters, even though their accents are fine.

Still, any complaints about the two pseudo-American leads fade rapidly when we turn our attention to the rest of the ensemble. The soldier boys are a real cut-and-paste job that could have been lifted from any number of military-related horror films, including but not limited to the original Outpost. We’ve got the ruthless one, the quietly compassionate one, the unnecessarily belligerent one, and the one who never stops with the dry wisecracks. As they’re so formulaic and unlikeable a bunch, it’s rather difficult to get too invested in their fates, and as such we don’t really feel the stakes when they face certain (and, in most cases, actual) death. Thankfully though, Barker and Brunton do not repeat the mistake of the first film by not even giving the good guys a fighting chance, and the question remains whether or not they will get out of there alive.

Alas, that’s not the only question that will remain at the end of the final reel, as the closing scenes leave things wide open for a third Outpost film, which I understand is currently in development. And if they carry on the course this ending suggests, I should imagine all hints of the first film’s Predator/Aliens influences will be all but expunged in favour of Resident Evil on a comparatively low budget. Is this a bad thing? Not necessarily. No, Outpost II isn’t anything special, and nor to my mind was its predecessor, but it still makes for a perfectly passable evening’s diversion. I’m sure we can expect more of the same should the series continue, and I can think of plenty worse things than that.

Outpost II: Black Sun has its UK premiere at FrightFest on 25th August, and is available on Region 2 DVD and Blu-Ray from 27th August, from Lionsgate.