Books and video games are all fodder for a story, as we have witnessed the recent success of the television series The Last of Us. Joe Lo Truglio’s claustrophobic, outdoor thriller Outpost clicked for me like the PS4 game Firewatch as it takes place outdoors in a fire watch tower. Claustrophobic and outdoors may seem contradictory in turns, yet the Film Noir genre made it a staple image of being alone in a vast metropolis.
The picture opens brutally with sounds of domestic violence with the aftermath on the victim, Kate (Beth Dover), who works in a local upscale restaurant. The cuts, bruises, and, more importantly, the look of trauma are all on her face as she sits watching the customers from an above location only to have her first psychotic break. The customers chillingly freeze and look straight at her, only to be broken by her manager’s voice asking why.
“Kate seeks calm and routine in her life, so she volunteers to a fire-watch…”
Outpost is a different take on the revenge, empowerment genre of film that debatably began with the infamous I Spit on Your Grave. This is not a derivative story of that theme but an exploration of a single woman seeking help, discovering a brutal realization when she learns she has the ‘power to channel’ when she successfully chops wood with an axe.
Kate seeks calm and routine in her life, so she volunteers to a fire-watch and spends three months in an outpost on top of an Idaho mountain. Looking to find healing in the isolation and silence, plus doing the duty of regular radio calls, watching for smoke, and checking for atmospheric conditions. Kate discovers that her closest neighbor, Reggie (Dylan Baker), is not what he appears to be. The film asks the question, is it Kate’s Delusions, or is what she sees real?
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