Movie assessment: The Outwaters will frighten fellow filmmakers
STORY CONTINUES BELOW THESE SALTWIRE VIDEOS
1 / 4-century after
The Blair Witch Mission
and per week and a half since
Skinamarink
comes
The Outwaters
, a found-footage horror movie that manages to mix the worst parts of each.
To begin, there isn’t a lot of a plot. We’re knowledgeable by title playing cards that we’re about to observe three digicam reminiscence playing cards, present in 2022 within the Mojave Desert (someplace between Areas 50 and 52 I’m guessing) and exhibiting the final photographs of 4 mates who disappeared there 5 years earlier.
Subsequent we meet Robbie, Angie, Scott and Michelle, the primary performed by author/director Robbie Banfitch. They’re heading out to the desert exterior San Francisco to hike and camp and possibly shoot a music video. They exude chill.
However as soon as they get there, factor begin getting bizarre. First it’s simply garden-variety oddness, like a bunch of donkeys on the street, staring them down. Then unexplained booming sounds that is likely to be lightning strikes or excessive explosives.
About midway by the movie’s hour and 40 minutes, we get to reminiscence card three, which is the place all hell breaks free. Sadly, whereas the early footage was just a bit jittery and disjointed, like a man telling you about final evening’s dream over a powerful espresso, these items is nearly unwatchable: Out of focus, poorly framed, badly lit, shaky, and that includes angles which can be generally so Dutch they’re really the other way up.
Then evening falls, and all we are able to see is what the digicam’s tiny highlight illuminates. It’s like we’re watching the film by a straw. I’m simply frightened, however the one folks more likely to expertise true horror at
The Outwaters
is cinematographers.
Give Banfitch credit score for benefiting from his shoestring finances of $15,000. The movie is laced with photographs of bizarre, snaky issues emitting noises that sound just like the cry of a child extraterrestrial from
Alien
, and elongated shadows which may portend equally distended limbs or may simply be a trick of the sunshine.
The Outwaters
has been making the rounds of area of interest festivals earlier than this temporary theatrical run, adopted by a house on horror streaming service Screambox. It did decide up a jury prize for finest movie at San Francisco’s Unnamed Footage Pageant, however not the viewers award. Make of that what you’ll
The Outwaters opens Feb. 10 in Toronto, Burlington, Windsor, Ottawa, Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver.
1.5 stars out of 5
Copyright Postmedia Community Inc., 2023
