‘The Outwaters’ (2023) Review – A Freight Train of Cosmic Horror

When done well, found footage horror scythes through all our “it’s just a movie” defense mechanisms to terrify on a singular level. The phenomenon that was The Blair Witch Project (1999) embodies how unnerving the genre can be. Filmmakers break down the constructs of the medium including us in the proceedings with a vérité flair. Add onto this the fact that we are surrounded by an exponentially growing world of devices and platforms structured on the daily need for producing and finding footage—the genre is baked into the audience’s reality more than ever before. Last year, Deadstream (2022) and We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (2022) showed off that fact. Kicking down the door early in this new year, Robbie Banfitch’s The Outwaters (2023) sucks in all this found footage history, blends it up, and spits out a freight train’s worth of cosmic horror.

The Outwaters’ framing device is a police investigation of three recovered memory cards connected to a group of people who went missing in the Mojave Desert. A classic found footage set-up. The cards have come from Robbie Zagaroc’s (Banfitch) camera. He is one of the missing, alongside his brother Scott (Scott Schamell), best friend Ange (Angela Basolis), and Michelle (Michelle May). We quickly learn that the group went out to the desert in order to film a music video for one of Michelle’s songs. The first half of the movie is devoted to Robbie’s documenting the gang as they prep and head to their filming location. Once they make it out and spend their first night under the stars, dread drips in. What starts as ominous sounds and curious lights rapidly deteriorates into the stuff of living nightmares.

Built out from Banfitch’s script, the storytelling in The Outwaters is formidably lean. Lesser found footage often suffers from stilted exposition. Characters literalize histories and story background that does not fit with their various framing devices. If your friend was picking up a camera to document a weekend would you feel the need to monologue about your relationships and name off all the major people around? I suspect not. The Outwaters is refreshing in the way that it allows us to extrapolate key bits of information without spoon-feeding it in clunky ways. Robbie filming the highlights of visiting Ange clarifies how close they are. He constantly aims the camera at Michelle in an Andrew Lincoln in Love Actually (2003) sort of way—there is no question he harbors unspoken feelings. Vignettes of characters and their preparation convey everything we need to care for these people and comprehend their plans.

The approach puts a lot of faith in the almost entirely green cast, which pays off in droves. Whether or not Banfitch cast his film with the idea that his co-stars would play versions of themselves to help things along, each actor radiates a naturalism that supercharges our buy-in. Early scenes with Banfitch and Schamell shine as they establish their brotherhood. Schamell captures the air of an older brother who is always sort of rolling his eyes at his younger brother’s schemes but is also going to charge on into them alongside him. Similarly, Basolis steals every moment she’s given as a perky city girl who is all in because she loves her best friend so much. Critically, May is completely believable as a rising musician with the sort of talent that convinces your friends to camp out in the desert for free to make a music video. 

When we hit the horror full throttle, we are as disoriented and petrified as these friends we have fallen for. Banfitch snatches large swatches of imposing beauty from the desert—sunsets, sunrises, May dancing around—but the truly jaw-dropping filmmaking arrives in the last 45 minutes. Glimpses of something off pepper the early desert goings, but it’s during one fateful night that everything goes to hell. Banfitch, who also edited The Outwaters, compiles a dizzying collage of terror that aesthetically mirrors the mental disorientation that his character experiences behind the camera. The camera’s small light plumbs the darkness, revealing flashes of blood, screaming faces, and mysterious movements. The world-class sound design mixes otherworldly screeches and reverberations with the tactile crunches and pants of desperate people. Watching it is to see a rabidly fresh cinematic voice coalesce in real-time—at once chilling and electrifying.

The Outwaters is the sort of movie that latches onto your spine while you’re watching and then settles into your bloodstream so you simply cannot stop feeling it as it crosses your mind. It is raw, disconcerting, and bang-on brilliant. 

The Outwaters is currently playing in select theaters nationwide courtesy of Cinedigm. 

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6Du7TvNqvY]