If I have ever learned anything from found footage it’s never to go on an excursion with friends.
It never goes well.
Like, at least don’t film it.
Maybe that’s the key.
Yeah, DO NOT FILM YOUR VACATION!
That’s just courting disaster.
I gotta be honest with you…I can’t quite tell you what THE OUTWATERS is about. I am gonna do my best though.
THE OUTWATERS finds four friends on their way to the desert to film a music video and just experience nature and the wonders of that barren land. As they are enjoying their trip they start to record strange sounds from the desert. They ignore these, believing they are simply audio hiccups but as they sleep they start to have vivid nightmares. In the evening the audio anomalies reveal themselves to be deep, thundering BOOMS that echo over the land and they cannot figure out where they come from. As their fear starts to take hold the horrors of the desert begin to exert themselves and this excursion may never end.
FAIR WARNING – there is a lot of shaky cam in the film, as well as a lot of night shooting with dim or no light. This is more an experience of senses than a straightforward narrative. Almost half of the film is blurry cam and lit with a flash type light.
This is a film that plays with reality and perception, the character’s as well as our wn.
This is a HARD movie if you are hoping for clear answers and understanding.
It’s engaging though, once it gets going.
I appreciate the characters getting room to breathe in the beginning of the film, though it also feels like the film meanders a little on its way forward. You will either go with it an dtake the journey, or you’ll be frustrated as I was. I appreciate storytelling technique as it’s very unique but you have to work so hard to try to figure things out that it gets hard trying to convince yourself it’s worth it.
It’s well made. The actors get huge kudos because they were all in on this. They stick to the found footage rules and there is no music outside of what you hear ambiently through their car stereo.
I applaud what they were trying to do with the film but it was just not for me. I didn’t connect to it in any way. I am sure if I Googled the movie and it’s meaning I’d find out and it’d make more sense but that’s sort of a cheat, isn’t it? Isn’t the movie supposed to make sense on its own without someone explaining it?
1.5 out of 5
Yes.
It most definitely has creepy tone and unnerving vibe and if you’re in to more freeform storytelling then you may well dig this one.
For me, it’s a…
1.5 out of 5
The Spooky World of Chris Ringler 