Review: The Outwaters (2022)

The Outwaters (2022)

Not rated

Score: 4 out of 5

The Outwaters was recommended to me by two of my friends as a sort of "Blair Witch Project in the desert", a modern found-footage horror movie that takes the genre back to its roots: no pretense, no budget, just a camera with the lost footage of several people who went missing in the wilderness. Finding that it was actually playing at a theater near me, I hurried over to check it out this past Sunday once I'd seen what I came for during the Super Bowl (sorry, Eagles and Chiefs fans, I was only watching for the halftime show). What I got was a film where the first half fit that description, only for the second half to turn into something far weirder, a fever dream of a man sinking into insanity as... some kind of supernatural force in the Mojave Desert consumes him and his friends before ending on a spectacularly grisly and gory note. It's a movie that offers no definitive answers but a whole lot of suggestions as to what's really happening to these people, from cryptids to government experiments to something more eldritch to some mixture thereof, all told against the backdrop of stunning yet creepy vistas that hit close to home for a guy who spent eight months working and camping in the Utah desert in very similar environments. I left the theater feeling like I'd been sent for a loop. Make no mistake, this movie isn't for everyone, especially not those who like their horror movies straightforward. But if you have an idea of what you're in for, this one is truly rewarding.

We start with Robbie, an aspiring filmmaker (played by the film's writer and director Robbie Banfitch) who's shooting a music video for his friend, an indie singer-songwriter named Michelle. Recruiting his brother Scott and his friend Angela to help him out, the four head into the desert outside Los Angeles to camp for a few days and shoot their video, whereupon they start encountering strange phenomena, especially at night. Booms in the distance. Shadowy figures. The kind of thing that would make you pack your bags and head back home immediately, except it's already too late -- the desert has you now. What follows is a waking nightmare as everything simply goes straight to hell, possibly literally if you take certain scenes at face value.

The thing that this movie gets about found footage that so many lesser ripoffs of Blair Witch missed is that, in many ways, a proper three-act narrative structure is a liability. The purpose of the format is to convince you that you're watching the actual "lost footage" filmed by the protagonists, which isn't gonna obey the normal rules and conventions of a movie because reality doesn't work that way. It's why a lot of the first half of the movie has the main characters hanging out in LA and planning their trip, with lots of interludes to showcase Michelle's music video because that's what the characters were there to film. The characters' dialogue and actions feel loose and improvised, lending the feeling of grounded authenticity that found footage needs if you wanna take it seriously. Less Hollywood glamour and special effects, more mumblecore. It's why I grew to like these characters, flawed as they were as human beings in distinctly relatable and recognizable ways, and care about their survival once bad things started happening to them.

It's also why, once those bad things started happening and that grounded authenticity turned into something far more bizarre, it felt that much more shocking. Because this movie was still operating by those rules I just spoke of even as all manner of weird sights started unfolding on screen, from strange worm-like creatures that resembled skinned snakes to what can only be described as temporal anomalies. I felt disoriented and lost, trapped in a nightmare that it seemed like I would never wake up from, just as Robbie did as he held onto the camera for dear life and slowly but surely fell into madness (or is it?). As it turns out, found footage, with its sudden breaks and capturing as many mundane moments as important ones, is also incredible at capturing dream logic where you're trying to piece together what's happening around you and the rules no longer seem to apply. Banfitch took the beautiful desert vistas around him and made something askew and unsettling out of them, a film that had me on my toes throughout and wondering when I was going to wake up. It was a fairly long and brutal movie, but the journey I took with it was worth it.

The Bottom Line

The Outwaters is a hard film to really describe given its lack of cohesion, but I can say that it's the first found-footage film I've seen in a long while that actually seems to do something new with the genre, starting with ultra-real normality to set the stage for when it pulls the rug out from under you with a wicked and savage second half. If this is playing near you, seek it out.