Outpost

Modern mercenaries are stalked by ghostly Nazis in this confident British horror movie, in which slim resources are applied to an intriguing but confused and underdeveloped storyline. Enigmatic businessman Hunt (Julian Wadham) hires ex-Royal Marine DC (Ray Stevenson) and a six-strong squad for an operation in WWII-ravaged Eastern Europe, where  they find a pile of corpses and one cadaverous, catatonic ‘breather’.

The real prize is a clunky machine used for secret Nazi experiments involving  the creation of perfect, unstoppable soldiers able to transport themselves through time and space. Despite some prosaic dialogue and uneven acting, director Steve Barker and his production designers work wonders with one location and some atmospheric, subterranean sets. But things slide from cod-science into supernatural predictability when spectral SS soldiers rise from the dead and attack the intruders. Promising, but the film’s fluctuating force-field never quite pulls us in.