The greatest claim to fame for the found-footage subgenre of horror has always been its pretense of authenticity. blair witch project or original paranormal activity Designed as a compelling facsimile of real life, it was meant to be indistinguishable from the doomed amateur documentary finale. [REC.] terrible things like Chernobyl Diary, the idea that these films capture “real life” became an excuse for low-budget, lo-fi filmmaking.that’s what makes Outwaters, the new horror film written, directed and starring by Robbie Banfitch is quite interesting. It makes extensive use of found footage trappings to allow Banfitch to deftly break the rules when things get really spooky.
Outwaters follows a group of four thirty-somethings on a desert adventure to shoot the perfect music video. The film begins recognizably enough. A documentary-type Robbie (Banfitch) holds the camera and captures the group’s moments of life and their first days in the desert in extreme close-up. With the open Mojave surrounding them, it gives the film a noticeable sense of loneliness that creeps in early on.
But even in these early moments, the camera doesn’t just report what’s going on, as found footage films usually do. Instead, it also shows Robbie’s thoughts and longings, and while he filmed his group’s singer Michelle (Michelle May) for much longer than he should have, we’re stuck with him. You can sit in. These moments are Outwaters’ style, but diametrically opposed to the usual found-footage tropes. These beats look weird in real life and will get the attention of Robbie’s friends as well as his real girlfriend.Instead, they are the first real clues Outwaters Instead of playing by the rules, we push the boundaries of found footage.
break even more convention, Outwaters It doesn’t add to the action like most found footage horrors. Instead of subtly pulling out a spooky, spooky moment before things really open up, Banfitch keeps a firm focus on the exhausting (and totally overlong) 45-minute friend’s normal camping trip. All hell breaks loose quickly when the characters finally get into trouble.
This is where the real tricks of the movie begin. Characters die, characters are injured, and strange men emerge with axes and huddle against the horizon. And most importantly, Robbie loses it completely. The further he strays from reality, the more his footage shifts toward something that feels like it was pulled directly from his slowly warping brain rather than from any kind of camera.
Getting these near-perspective shots from the lobby is a ridiculously disorienting experience. Banfitch is still camera-conscious and uses its limits so often that subjective shifts become even more difficult to spot and unnerving. I feel like Just to get a sense of the new, extremely brutal work his fading mind has imposed on him.
when it is working Outwaters It feels like the audience was invited to witness the horror run through Mike’s head at the end. blair witch project as he stares into the corner of the basement. Robbie becomes an eyewitness not only to the horrors of reality’s fraying, but also to something more cosmic and less earthly, and thanks to the film’s blend of his footage and his disintegration, we can see both firsthand. can be. At its best, Outwaters It puts us too far inside Robbie’s brain to give us the distance we crave to make sense of what we’re being shown. It finds the biggest problem.
One of the problems with this fictional found-footage method (sometimes it’s just a first-person experiential film) is that it’s not easy to keep the camera aligned with what’s going on with the characters.Too often, banfiches are inconspicuous Outwaters‘Maximum moment, undermine their eerie potential. Scenes later in the film are usually lit with flashlights or not at all, making the action frustratingly difficult to see and what could have been a more meaningful and creepy addition to the film. Being nearly blind is a little unnerving, but it’s more confusing than anything else, and in some sections you have no sense of direction or fear at all.
perhaps OutwatersThe most conclusively discovered footage-inspired issue lies in its framing device: a series of three memory cards believed to have been found somewhere in the desert, the final evidence of the character’s disappearance. This is a subgenre classic. “It could all be real!” indicates the use of some found footage film to give the film real-world weight.but Outwaters You don’t need that gimmick. That footage is effective enough on its own, especially when you’re witnessing something the camera can’t seem to capture, and it takes an incredible toll on memory card framing. is excellent, but the false immersion cannot be tracked.
Outwaters It’s not quite the subversion of the found footage subgenre like something like Joel Anderson’s 2008 horror mockumentary. lake mango, the inherent faux pas are built not only into the plot, but also into its conclusion.of lake mangothe idea that the images on the screen are false is fundamental, and the accuracy of the story, the subjectivity of who is telling it, and whether any of them are fictional films should be trusted at all. I am questioning whether lake mango used the questions behind the found footage as a proxy for the different ways we process grief, and the dead stick with us in pictures and memories (and perhaps elsewhere) long after they’ve died. use the method.
in the meantime Outwaters It likewise demands a larger audience than the average found-footage film. It works within the genre for just long enough to break tradition, and by the time all hell breaks loose, it’s far beyond subgenre boundaries and becomes something else entirely. The mix of eerie spotted footage, eerie third-person observer senses detached from time and reality all create effects that go deeper into Robbie’s unraveling mind than traditional horror films.
Outwaters It is currently showing in select theaters.can be streamed at scream box Or rent on VOD from services like Amazon Or YouTube.