Survival is thrilling, trauma is frightening; we’ve seen many of these themes in stories this year, but unfortunately, we fall short of either mark in Outpost. Director Joe Lo Truglio is historically the funny man with most of his numerous credits being acting in comedic shows such as Reno 911! and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, with two previous directing attempts rooted in much less serious subject matters. With many good ideas floating around the genre, especially for a first attempt, regarding trauma, autonomy, isolation and psychological thrills, Outpost throws everything at the wall for only its side characters and end act to stick. Lo Truglio may have a future in horror yet with some of the ideas coming to light in Outpost, but this particular film – with a lead that’s hard to connect with and a story that persistently plays with perception – makes it hard to get a grip on anything long enough to enjoy.
Screams and brief scenes of violence preface Kate (Beth Dover) staring petrified and injured into a screen watching some unknown trauma unfold. Flashing quickly forward Kate is at work, but so is her trauma. Written on her face are the markings of violence and an eerie moment where she believes every customer is staring at her in a hallmark of hypervigilance. Abruptly shifting scenes again, Kate is with her friend Nickie (Ta’Rea Campbell) and she’s looking to get a new job, far off in the woods, to find her escape from abuse. Cutting to the opening titles, we move forward with Nickie and Kate on their ride into Idaho, as Kate prepares for her position as a solo operator scanning for forest fires. A rest stop turns into a dissociative episode as Kate imagines patrons staring and the cashier strangling her, his image briefly turning into her former partner, before the hallucination is broken.
Finally arriving at the station, Kate is introduced to Earl (Ato Essandoh), Nickie’s brother. He’s Kate’s superior, with whom Nickie seems to share a tense but loving connection, and he’s the reason Kate scored this position. Earl gets Kate started but seems hesitant at her abilities as a volunteer. They make their way by car, then by foot, as wildfires have damaged the roads. A slip and fall leads to more gory visions for Kate when she sees an animal corpse. Earl explains the nearby watchtowers were put up after the states were told to bear the cost of fire-fighting but they didn’t have enough man power, leading Kate up to dizzying heights in the tower and stunning natural panoramic views. Her duties will include taking humidity measurements, radio check ins, and rainfall tracking. I’ll divert momentarily and say Kate’s character is hard to track. She can go from chipper leaning towards desperate, to despondent, to cruel in a moment’s notice when she makes a flippant comment about Earl’s wife hating Nickie’s sexuality, barely having known the man for an hour. While I understand trauma victims’ behavior can be erratic, this writing does the character no favors in making her relatable or understandable.
Having sufficiently driven Earl off, Kate is in the solitude she so desperately craves, enjoying a glass of wine and ironically littering the forest with her bandages. Evening brings no solace, as intense closeups on the items in the room give a feeling of claustrophobia, emphasizing Kate’s inability to turn off her trauma mind. Sleep comes soon enough, but when morning breaks, a pair of strange footsteps not belonging to Earl are coming up the stairs, sending Kate into a panic. Shockingly, her ex-partner Mike (Tim Neff), with keys in hand, comes to the door and asks to talk. After striking him, Kate takes off running into the forest, Mike not far behind, but when Mike suddenly appears in her car with an axe after being locked out just moments before, our suspicions are confirmed: this is more PTSD at play. This episode causes her to miss her first radio check by 30 minutes, but Kate is less concerned with failing at her first and only task of the morning and asking who knows that she is in the outpost. Earl lets her know only the locals are aware and gives her the location of her nearest neighbor, after one last check that she’s certain she can handle herself.
This movie had potential, but our director’s journey into a new genre seems to have left some hurdles too large for me to ignore. The pacing and editing of the film are difficult to follow and it has a choppiness to it. The initial portion of Outpost cuts between very short scenes and Kate’s continuous visions, placing her as the unreliable narrator and making some of the things we are seeing doubtful. This is also partially because, unfortunately, performers and writers can never quite seem to balance what this complex character was meant to be. With such a talented cast backing this film up, I was happy with other performances (especially a welcome appearance from a hilarious Becky Ann Baker), but Kate seemed to be one reaction-close-up after another to stimuli and heavy symbolism. Her defiant point of view and persistent denial that could (and does) put people in harm’s way left me distraught with the constant possibility of events being fact or fiction (that’s one way to keep you on the edge). With the visions finally manifesting into something concrete towards the film’s end, we might not get a pleasant conclusion, but at least it’s an explosive, gory one.
By the time we shift gears into a shrieking, gruesome final act with a trauma twist, your patience is exhausted and not rewarded with any fulfilling closure as the film, in my opinion, ends very abruptly and in the midst of serious events. Again, I attribute this perhaps to inexperience with the genre, but the editing and narrative are so irregular that even the ending felt mistimed. With an all-star cast brought down by a meandering plot and an unlikable lead character that leaves you playing the guessing game for far too long, this film only left a few things in the wings to savor. I survived my ordeal with Outpost, and hope that Lo Truglio in his next efforts, should he continue with horror, will keep his keen eye for casting, but hopefully he will be able to smooth out the cinematography and edits to get a more powerful delivery of… whatever this message was supposed to be. I hope if you venture into this murky feature you have patience and keen eyes, and maybe you’ll be rewarded with a story of survival I couldn’t enjoy to its fullest.
Outpost (2022) is available to stream now.