"Outpost" almost gets there as a trauma-focused horror psychodrama

Outpost (2023)


There’s something about comedy people having a flair for making a horror movie (i.e. Jordan Peele, Zach Cregger, and Danny McBride). “The State” and “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” alumnus Joe Lo Truglio tries his hand with “Outpost,” his writing-directing feature debut. While he clearly has his influences, like “The Shining,” and gets resourceful on a budget, the results aren’t entirely successful. This woman-gone-mad piece wants to be about something of substance (trauma), so it’s caught between being a sympathetic PTSD psychodrama and a nasty exploitation pic without being fully effective as either. 


The wild-eyed Beth Dover, Lo Truglio’s wife, plays Kate, a woman who’s recovering from an abusive relationship. She works behind the scenes in the restaurant industry but needs to get out of the city for a while. With the help of her best friend Nickie’s (Ta’Rea Campbell) no-nonsense brother Earl (Ato Essandoh), she takes a gig to report wildfires in the Idaho wilderness. For three months, Kate lives alone in a watchtower. She wants to find her peace and be self-sufficient, but of course, Kate begins seeing things that aren’t there, worst of all her ex-boyfriend coming up the tower to get her. Cue the flash frames of bloody, maggot-infested coyote carcasses and hallucinations of other traumas. 


Kate really needs to be more careful when having things so close to the railing of her tower, but a broken coffee mug and cell phone will be the least of her worries. Beth Dover is up to the task, which is just frustrating when the script kind of undermines her solidly sensitive work with a simplistic arc. Great character actors Dylan Baker and Becky Ann Baker (who are also married in real life) each show up, respectively, as Kate’s nearest neighbor, a solitary widower named Reggie, and a chatty hiker named Bertha with whom Kate confides. They become interesting company for Kate and give Dover others to play with in what is otherwise an acting-with-oneself exercise and story about isolation. 


Joe Lo Truglio has a great location and setup for “Outpost,” and it’s surprisingly well-shot on a shoestring. There are cracks in his direction, however, often verging on choppiness and amateurishness (never has a stunt double been more glaring), and his script could have used a little more polish. An obvious reveal is effectively executed anyway, but the film’s proceedings seem to want to explore trauma, only to end up stigmatizing trauma in ways that aren’t novel or thoughtful. Then again, maybe we're supposed to feel as empty and devastated as Beth, but good intentions won’t always translate. The promising thing about debuts, “Outpost” included, is that the filmmaker can get us excited about what they’ll do next. You didn’t do it this time, Joe, but we’re still rooting for you.


Grade: C +


Gravitas Ventures released “Outpost” (84 min.) in select theaters and on demand on May 19, 2023. 

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