Directed By Robbie Banfitch

Starring – Robbie Banfitch, Angela Basolis, Scott Schamell

The Plot – Four travelers encounter menacing phenomena while camping in a remote stretch of the Mojave Desert.

Rated R for gruesome imagery, adult language and nudity

The Outwaters | Official Trailer – YouTube

POSITIVES

For a movie decorated by a measely $15,000 production budget, the film is actually quite exceptional in both its ambition and expressive nature that it uses to paint such a disorienting and at times otherworldly experience. Whether in the breathtaking imagery of the isolated setting cementing an inescapably helpless enveloping to such scenic splendor, or even the immersive intricacies of the movie’s boldly rapturing sound designs conveying everything in sound that we can’t articulate in sight, this film seamlessly paints a haunted uneasiness to the sensitive sensory of the engagement that isn’t necessarily easy to shake, but one that Banfitch almost entirely crafts for the singular vision of what feels like an off the rails fever dream. Banfitch himself, aside from being the movie’s primary protagonist, is the movie’s writer, director, producer, cinematographer, sound mixer and special effects artist, and while his performance is the most enthralling of all of these aspects, you simply can’t help but respect a man who is investing twice as much of himself off-screen as he is on-screen, with his passion bleeding over into a script that quite audaciously caters to the weirdly cryptic at all times, even if it alienates its audience along the way. It’s fearless cinema at its most provocative and evocative, and even if the results will divide and vary among audiences respectively, it’s unforgettable cinema at the very least, with unforeseen directions in ruthlessness that will leave moviegoers talking, long after its conclusion.

NEGATIVES

Far too often, this film is a victim of its own creative judgments, leading to a a frustrating and occasionally dull engagement that requires much more interpretation than I would care to invest towards clarity. That’s not to say that I hate art horror, as “Skinamarink”, a movie with no defined plot, was easily in my top ten of favorite films last year, it’s just that here that same kind of cryptic ambiguity never materializes towards something that’s meaningfully compelling or profoundly thought-provoking to the extreme imagery that feels unnecessarily shocking for the sake of attaining notoriety, instead of fleshing out a truly transformative experience. In addition to this, I simply don’t feel that this film ever warrants a found footage enveloping, and more times than not this gimmick of storytelling directly compromises scenes of tension and vulnerability with depictions so obstructed by motion-sickness camera work and minimalized lighting that your eyes often fight the dark to make out something, anything that inscribes clarity to the confusion. One such element of this blunder is in the gimmick of using a flashlight with a peakhole sized width and length to luminate sequences taking shape in the dark, with so much of the screen’s majority in darkness. This makes it difficult to properly interpret what’s happening with the characters, or especially what’s attacking them at all times, leading for a complete lack of pay-off in the big reveals that often arrive and decepate without the kind of definition that at the very least solidifies just what kind of threat we’re properly dealing with here. Keep in mind that these are the thrilling and climactic scenes and sequences, and before this we’re subjected to a half hour of backstory and exposition that has us waiting a bit too long before the plot and the horror elements of the film come to fruition. If we learned anything meaningful about these characters during this time, then the minutes would gladly be spent towards enhancing the stakes and urgency of the narrative, but the initial scenes only convey the kind of throwaway dialogue and interaction meant to forcefully push the run time across 100 underwhelming minutes, that drags like the worst kind of overpopulized charter plane because of how rarely we’re able to evade them. As for other reasons why this shouldn’t be a found footage film, the gimmick itself is once again blundered with a required suspension of disbelief so monumumental that it makes the “Fast and Furious” crew blush in response. For starters, the early scene involving Michelle performing live involves obvious cuts and pasting between dual angles, directly compromising the integrity of an untouched gimmick of footage that our authorities are supposedly watching for the first time. Likewise, this is another example of futuristic technology involved in these movies, that has the durability to not only overcome tall drops onto rocky surfaces, but also pools of blood in which the operator becomes engulfed in, all with our protagonist deciding to shoot every single minute of these conflicts while he’s continuously running for his life. Having this film not be a found footage movie would’ve evaded most of my aforementioned problems, but it only makes them all the more glaring in execution, leaving this the addition to the leaning pile of underwhelming found footage returns that have made the gimmick an element of outdated expressionism for 21st century horror.

OVERALL
“The Outwaters” is able to conjure sharp sensory merits that feel Benjamin’s ahead of its penny-pinching production budget but can’t stitch together a hefty narrative to overcome the many hinderances of its found footage framing device. Though the ambition from Banfitch is admirably conjured throughout an occasionally tense and tormenting engagement, the frustrations mount in a film that never fully justifies the length of its run time, nor the justification of its contextual filming, leading to a combination of tedium and indecipherable that haunt our four friends even more than mysteries of what goes bump in the night.

My Grade: 4/10 or D-