The Outwaters review | A terrifying, mind-bending journey

★★★★☆

Fear is subjective. What scares me might not scare you and vice versa, which is why horror is such a tricky genre for filmmakers to get right. How do you terrorise your audience without traumatising them for life while providing them with a good time? 

Many have mastered this skill; John Carpenter, Wes Craven, Ari Aster and James Wan are just a few names that have provided us with frightfully good times. Their horror fables often include the element of the unknown. Whether it’s an unknown, faceless killer or something a little more supernatural, the fear of the unknown is often baked directly into the narratives of the best horror films.

The Outwaters, the debut film of writer-director Robbie Banfitch, takes the fear of the unknown and runs with it, with terrifying results. The Outwaters employs a found footage -format; if scaring people is tricky, it’s even trickier to get them to believe what they’re watching is real. 

Credit: Blue Finch Films Releasing

Four friends, Robbie (Banfitch), Robbie’s brother Scott (Scott Schamell), Michelle (Michelle May) and Ange (Angela Basolis) drive out to the Mojave desert in order to shoot an epic music video for Michelle. While camped there, they experience strange phenomena and hear unnatural sounds all around them. 

The film begins with a panicked emergency call, setting the mood for terror. We also get an explanation that what we are watching was pieced together by investigators from three memory cards found in the desert. It gives a neat answer as to why we are watching The Outwaters and why the footage has been edited into a somewhat linear narrative. 

Already, The Outwaters is off to a good start, but the film is a journey and should be viewed as such. Sometimes, it’s not so much about the destination but the road to it. Banfitch’s film offers very few answers to the questions it poses and values ambience and atmosphere above a satisfying, concluding narrative. 

For most, The Outwaters might prove too challenging. Banfitch tests our patience as he first makes us sit through 45 minutes of essentially nothing at all. The first half of the film mostly consists of grainy, shakily filmed closeups of the groups, and we’re drip-fed information about them; Ange has just got married, Scott has a troubled relationship with the brothers’ parents and Michelle has a delightful, angelic voice. 

Credit: Blue Finch Films Releasing

While there is evidence of creepy occurrences early on, nothing substantial happens until very late in the game. The found footage style works wonders when shit does hit the fan. Banfitch often limits our perspective and vision to a single spotlight from a meagre torch Robbie is carrying while filming the group’s terrifying experiences. This subjective view proves to be frustrating, almost unbearably so and completely by Banfitch’s design. 

There’s something thoroughly exhilarating about being manipulated and spellbound by a filmmaker to this extent. The Outwaters is almost hypnotic in its relentless pursuit of terror. Not knowing what lurks in the dark and what really is happening to the characters is terrifying in a way Ghostface or Jigsaw will never be. 

The Outwaters won’t be for everyone and is in no way a perfect film. It can’t quite sustain the intensity it opts for, and the lengthy first act bogs it down. Yet, it has a sense of mystery, guaranteeing Banfitch’s film stays with you, burrowing itself under your skin for a long while. 

The Outwaters is in cinemas on 7 April and on digital on 8 May