If “Skinamarink” was the first break-out indie horror hit of 2023, the second has to be “The Outwaters.” Coming out only a few weeks after Kyle Edward Ball's film got a theatrical release, Robbie Banfitch's found footage mind-bender followed a similar release path. A micro-budget forcing the filmmakers to rely largely on the power of suggestion, “The Outwaters” received some rave reviews on the festival circuit, a few hailing it as the next scariest movie ever made. From there, it got a limited theatrical release proceeding a debut on a horror-themed streaming service. (In this case, Shudder rival Screambox.) And if “Skinamarink” was divisive, “The Outwaters” would prove to be even more-so. Once again, the time has come for me to judge for myself.
“The Outwaters,” belonging to the “Blair Witch” tradition, presents itself as the recovered footage from camera memory cards discovered in the Mojave Desert. Filmmaker Robbie, his wife Angela, and his brother Scott head into the desert to film a music video for singer Michelle, a mutual friend. As they wander further into the arid landscape, the group begins to notice strange things. They hear thundering noises at night, see an unusual light in the sky, and while high pitched sounds echoing from within a rock. The next night, the quartet are attacked by a bloody, naked man wielding a hatchet. From there, Robbie – clinging to his camera – spirals headfirst into otherworldly terror.
In order to visually convey such a mind-altering experience, Banfitch's film pushes the found footage format as far as it can. This means long stretches of “The Outwaters” are devoted to a handheld camera fumbling around through the dark. There's lots of shot of Robbie's feet and hands. We see briefly illuminated shots of bloodied faces, smeared viscera, and weird creatures. There are memorable images, mostly playing off the flat, wide, still landscapes of the desert. Yet whether or not you find “The Outwater's” almost experimental relationship to traditional visual coherence compelling or irritating will depend entirely on taste. If “Skinamarink” can be dismissed as 100 minutes of the camera pointing at the corner of a hallway, “The Outwaters” can be dismissed as nearly two hours of some asshole dropping his camera in the desert night.
Yet there's a big problem facing “The Outwaters.” You never really care about these characters. The best found footage movies use the naturalistic interactions of the characters, serendipitously caught on camera within the film's universe, to establish who these people are. Banfitch takes this idea to its furthest point. The first fifty minutes of “The Outwaters” is devoted to these characters just... Doing stuff. They talk, they drink, they party, they mess around with the camera. While hints at relationships and their collective past are hinted at – Robbie having a deceased father, for one – we never really get a sense of who these people are. Without a sense of personality to ground the audience, the second half feels like weird shit happening for no reason. When the movie descends into outrageous gore in its final moments, you feel like the filmmakers have exhausted all the tools available to them.
In his brief life, Michael Reeves directed three horror icons. Before making “The Sorcerers” with Boris Karloff and “Witchfinder General” with Vincent Price, he was just a film-obsessed kid who ran away from home to show up on Don Siegel's doorstep. This gumption got Reeves a job as on Siegel's next movie, the first of several such gigs. While functioning as an assistant director on “Castle of the Living Dead” – starring another genre giant, Christopher Lee – he would impress producer Paul Manlansky. Manlansky would fund Reeves' first feature as a director, “The She Beast.” It would star another well-known horror luminary, Barbara Steele. Steele was paid one grand for one day, which stretched on for 18 hours, much to her annoyance. The film received little attention, at the time, but it would begin Reeves' short, fruitful career as a distinctive filmmaker.
200 years ago, in Transylvania, a hideous witch named Bardella is executed by a Christian mob. With her dying breath, she curses the village, promising to return and seek vengeance on their descendants. In the modern day – 1966 – married couple Phillip and Veronica are vacationing the same area. Following a nasty experience at a sleazy motel, they are involved in a traffic accident, the couple's Volkswagen crashing into the same lake Bardella was executed in. The witch's spirit trades places with Veronica's body, soon rising again to fulfill her prophecy. The thoroughly baffled Philip teams up with the alcoholic last member of the Von Helsing family to reserve the curse, while butting heads with local Communist authorities.
Stories that place ancient horrors in the then-modern context of Soviet Europe are not totally unheard of. Yet any attempt at political subtext in “The She Beast” is muddy, at best. Bardella murders the sleazy hotel owner with a sickle, which she then tosses aside and lands perfectly on a near-by hammer. That seems to align the witch with the restrictive government, praying on Romania's citizens. Yet she's opposed by the Communist law enforcement too and her victims are equally unsympathetic, making it unclear where the film lies on the issue of socialism. One thing is obvious though: “The She Beast” does not paint a very flattering picture of life in a Soviet bloc country. The hotel owner spies on Veronica and Philip as they get intimate, before later attempting to rape his niece. The cops are incompetent and absurd, the truck drivers are criminals, and all the surroundings are dingy and rundown.
Steele, by the way, only appears at the beginning and the end. Most of the movie is devoted to Ian Oligvy and John Karlson, as Philip and Von Helsing, bumbling after the almost comically ineffectual witch. The movie definitely could've used more of Steele's unforgettable screen presence. As goofy as “The She Beast” is, you can see some of the intensity and style that would make Reeves' later films cult classics. Had he not died at the age of 25, who knows what the filmmaker might've achieved. He left behind a short, distinctive filmography and this is certainly an off-beat, if not wholly successful, start to it. [6/10]
When I compared Guillermo del Toro's “Cabinet of Curiosities” to “Masters of Horror,” I did it without realizing both series featured takes on the same Lovecraft story, the oft-adapted “Dreams in the Witch House.” Though it seems unlikely anyone would consider Catherine Hardwicke – of “Twilight” infamy – the same sort of master as Stuart Gordon. The episode follows Walter Gillman. When he was a young boy, he watched his twin sister die and her spirit dragged away to a spectral forest. This gave him a lifelong obsession with spiritualism. He finds most mediums to be fakes but, upon taking a mind-expanding drug, discovers travel to the other side is possible. He takes up residence in the home of a notorious 17th century witch named Keziah Mason. As Walter endeavors to save his sister's soul, he becomes a target for the still hungry spirit of Keziah.
Mika Watson's script takes little from Lovecraft's story, almost to the point of being an in-name-only adaptation. Howard Phillip's concept of mathematics as witchcraft and visions of non-Euclidean alternate dimensions are mostly discarded for fuzzily defined magic. The script here devotes entirely too much time to explaining every single thing that is happening. The drug Walter does is named and its effects repeatedly described. The exact nature of the nether realm his sister is trapped in is breathlessly elaborated on. Right before the last act kicks in, yet more details concerning the magic ritual are dumped on us. Not a single moment of ambiguity or mystery is allowed to exist within this hour.
Even though Hardwicke has made other movies, I couldn't stop thinking of “Twilight” during this laborious hour. “Dreams in the Witch House” is really structured like a Y.A. adaptation. There's a magical MacGuffin introduced strictly to defeat the villain, deployed in a climatic moment. All the cinematography is highly color-graded and overly dark, in a way that reminds me of the perpetually overcast vampire romance. Even the fact that this stars Rupert Gint, forever known for his role in the “Harry Potter” films, make this connection unavoidable. By the far the worst moment occurs when our heroes take shelter in a church and a nun swears at the witch as she approaches. I'll admit, Netflix crashed a few minutes before the episode finished but it was so shitty that I really had no desire to watch the rest of it. I'm shocked that a Lovecraft devotee like del Toro would be comfortable putting his name on this truly unfortunate adaptation. [4/10]
Picking up where the last episode left off, “He Is Risen Indeed” begins with Devon and Lexy discovering that Andy is still alive, tied down and slowly being cannibalized by an unhinged Chucky calling himself “The Colonel.” It also becomes apparent that Dr. Mixter, the therapist that recommends the kids come to Incarnate Heart, is revealed as working with Chucky. The Colonel heads back to the school to deal with Buff Chucky, currently being worshiped by the nun who has mistaken him for an incarnation of Christ. The teens gather together to defend against the inevitable attack from the dolls. Meanwhile, Glenda and Kyle deal with the original Chucky's spirit inside Nica.
“He Is Risen Indeed” represents that inevitable, somewhat insufferable point in the serialized horror TV show season where all the subplots start to get cleaved through. Plot lines and peripheral characters are dealt with in quick succession. The different Chuckies floating around are whittled down. Certain characters that probably aren't so important are pushed to the side. (If not killed off, since this is that kind of show.) This has the side effect of revealing which events in this series were essentially unimportant diversions introduced to fill the eight hours of time this show has in a season. Stuff like this is why I don't usually watch TV shows like this.
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