“Outpost” (2023): A Mountain of Mayhem

My dad bought a cabin on Priest Lake in northern Idaho when I was a child. It has been a refuge of solace, relaxation and contentment for decades now. A treasured touchstone to which extended family and dear friends return every summer to be together once again in this place we all so appreciate and adore.

Now enter the new dramatic Horror flick “Outpost”.

I can hear the chorus: “What the hell, dude?!”

Stay with me, friends. For this intense introspection of an emotionally broken woman’s delirious descension into hallucination-generating PTSD is filmed almost entirely at Priest Lake.

I know. I couldn't believe it, either!

Now, granted, I was predisposed to like “Outpost”, right? I mean considering it’s sentimental locale and the fact that several of the scenes here are shot in spots I’ve personally been to on too many occasions to to even quantify, really how could I not?

But, the fact is, this is a helluva ride based solely upon it’s own damn deservingness.

First-time feature film director Joe Lo Truglio (Charles Boyle of TV’s “Brooklyn Nine-Nine”) delivers a surefooted and scary as shit story here of Kate, a severely damaged woman both mentally and physically. This is a stunning performance-incendiary and primal-from Truglio's wife, veteran actress Beth Dover (Linda Ferguson from Netflix’s mega-popular series “Orange Is the New Black”).

Kate has endured a lifetime of shocking and sickening abuse since she was a girl. She determines that a job working alone in a mountain top tower as a forest fire spotter is just what she needs to set herself straight.

Kate is wrong. Dead wrong.

For soon, an eruptive psychotic detonation screams a violent and gruesome message of unleashed rage and retribution to all she comes in contact with on that secluded summit.

Enough.