Outlander: An Overlooked Gem

It was in the theaters for about an hour and a half, and slipped onto DVD shelves in May with barely a quiver, but amidst all the slam-bang-boom of the summer blockbusters, perhaps the best fantasy / action / adventure / sf / monster / kick-ass movie of the year remains: Outlander.

Simple but surprising plot: an alien soldier, indistinguishable from humans, crashes on Earth and inadvertently releases a horrible creature, the Morwen, on an unsuspecting Earth, where it immediately begins killing as fast as it can. The alien enlists the help of the locals to capture and kill the thing before it can kill even more and propagate. Major problem: the alien landed in Norway c. 905. So it's Vikings vs. Predator/Alien, but better.

Jim Caviezel is tremendous as Kainan, the alien solider/hero. Sophia (Moonlight) Myers is absolutely beautiful and believable as Freya, his warrior-woman love, and you'll barely recognize a near-cameo of Ron (Hellboy) Perlman as a rival king. But the real star of the movie is the Morwen, without a doubt the best CG monster of the year and then some. And you should see it underwater. And on fire! And this ain't even the climax! It's an excellent example of just how good CG can be if the design and animation is top-notch and the context and editing seals the deal.

Here’s a merely representative sequence from the middle of the movie – this ain’t even the climax! – to show just how good CG can be if the design and animation is top-notch and the context and editing seals the deal.



The good news:  Dirk Blackman and Howard McCain, who wrote this nice piece, (McCain directed, too) have just been hired to do a major rewrite on the Conan the Barbarian script (and no, they still haven't cast Conan yet)..  Maybe there’s hope for that project after all…

Netflix or buy Outlander here.