Title: The Outwaters
Describe This Movie In One Alice in Chains Lyric:
AiC: Down in a hole, losin’ my soul
Brief Plot Synopsis: Hipster doofuses are no match for cosmic mind f*ckery.
Rating Using Random Objects Relevant To The Film: 2 King Missiles out of 5.
Tagline: “We all die in the dark.”
Better Tagline: “Movies: making America scared of camping since 1972.”
Not So Brief Plot Synopsis: Video cards are the only things left after Robbie, Scott, Michelle, and Ange went camping in the Mojave Desert five years ago to shoot a music video for Michelle. Things started off mildly enough but unexplainable things began happening. And before you can say, “the hills have eyes,” their little excursion had spun violently out of control.
“Critical” Analysis: Found footage either is your jam or it isn’t. The Outwaters follows in the venerable-ish tradition of films like The Last Broadcast and REC but is most similar, in form and feel, to The Blair Witch Project. Both feature sets of youths venturing off the beaten path, never to be seen or heard from again until their recording devices were discovered.
This necessary conceit of the genre almost makes more sense today, with everyone prone to filming every aspect of their lives no matter how mundane. It’s what makes the first two-thirds of The Outwaters more believable than, say, Cloverfield. Unfortunately, writer/director Robbie Banfitch (who plays the character of the same name) takes it to implausible levels and ultimately overstays his welcome.
The film’s three acts are told via the discovered video cards. The first shows the group assembling in Los Angeles — Ange (Angela Basolis) is coming from New Jersey to do Michelle’s hair, because apparently no one in L.A. knows how — hiking into the desert, and (initially) enjoying their surroundings. This act ominously ends with Robbie muttering, “I don’t want to leave.”
Card two finds the foursome out in the desert when “weird shit” starts to happen: a mysterious figure strolling on the dry lake bed; an axe incongruously stuck in the ground; concussive thunder (with no apparent lightning); and a ball of light that collapses in on itself.
You don’t even need to get to the part where they’re sticking mics in holes in the rock and getting weird feedback where most people would get the hell out of there.
Wouldn’t be much of a horror movie if they did, though. The first half of The Outwaters unfolds deliberately (and, honestly, somewhat self-indulgently). Found footage is a framing device ripe for misuse, and in establishing the characters, Banfitch occasionally stumbles in propelling the story.
The movie opens with a 911 call (fielded by the most sedate operator of all time) that telegraphs a horrifying ending, though other red herrings are dropped here and there that come to nothing. The sound design does its job, with the mysterious booming and lightning-less thunder adding atmosphere, and nothing makes one pucker up like a few good disembodied screams.
It’s disorienting and unsettling, but it turns out there’s only so much you can convey when half the movie takes place in the illumination of a single flashlight at night. That may have been Banfitch’s intent, but a little of that goes a hell of a long way. And the ending, while almost laughably gory, is also too disjointed to hit as hard as it wants.
Disappointing, because the idea of a GenZ/Benson-Moorhead crossover is rather intriguing. Ah well.
The Outwaters is in theaters today.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2023.
