Outwaters(2023)(Revision) - Gruesome Gazette

Last year, ‘The Outwaters’ was released to very divisive responses. Both of us here tore this movie to shreds and hated it, not finding one redeeming quality to it. However, after further analysis, I’ve decided I’ve completely changed my mind. In fact, this may have been one of the most disturbing films I’ve seen this year. Please, allow me to explain.

The story is centered around 4 friends who go to the desert to film an indie-pop music video. When nightfall comes, a lightning storm happens overhead that is more intense than anything they’ve ever seen. What follows is an hour long series of almost pitch-black shots and incoherent yelling.

Now, allow me to get into it. I saw this film on a particular night where I was pretty much empty. I was completely drained – physically, emotionally, and spiritually – and had spent about two hours prior watching compilations of “Most Disturbing Camping Encounters” videos on YouTube. So when it hit about 2 am, I shut off all the lights and decided to watch a found footage film. This one popped up on my Vudu from when I bought it last year, and the apathy in me decided “fuck it, let’s go.” I turned the volume in my headphones up to a pretty much uncomfortable level and kicked my feet up.

Ladies and gentlemen, given the surrounding situations – this movie destroyed me. While the final hour of the film is in fact pitch black with a very limited amount of visibility presented through a peephole-sized flashlight, the soundscape and my inner demons brought this film to life. What literally happens, is that on the following night when the storm returns, there is a silhouette of a man holding a hatchet in the dark on the top of the hill. As the cameraman sees him and tries to flag him down to see who it is, we cut to blackness but hear what sounds like the cameraman getting stabbed with the hatchet. He then crawls into his tent where the other man is sleeping, blood pouring out of the back of his head, and he slowly tries to wake up him up right before Hell itself happens.

It would seem that he dies from this and is transported to his own personal Hell. We are surrounded by vast shots of the empty desert (both in the day and night – since they blur together here on), shots of his friends repetitively screaming for dear mercy or whispering haunting things. We see incoherent shots of strange snakes, blood everywhere, more silhouetted men, and more. Since our visibility is limited, our imaginations do have to fill in a lot of blanks. Given the mental state I was in when I entered, this film was a nightmare. We get some very dreamlike things where he ends up in a series of time loops, and one repeating one involves him sitting next to his friend who wakes up, stares at him, starts doing things like peeking out from the tent, but he barely speaks a word to the cameraman. This is an image I often get in my nightmares. The blood splattered everywhere and having no clue what I’m looking at or where I am? Yup, another nightmare. The fact that the cameraman each time he enters a new scene is basically loopy and can barely speak after a point? Yup, another nightmare. A scene where all my friends are dead with their heads on spikes? Yup…

This movie really worked this time. And quite frankly, it felt like when I watched ‘The Blair Witch Project’ for the first time as a kid. I do not expect this review to convince anybody otherwise who hated this film – because I seriously did – , but I get it now.

My final verdict? This movie is thall as fuck.

5/5
“The Outwaters” is currently streaming on Screambox and Vudu.

‘Til Next Time,
Mike Cleopatra