The Outsider

If you ever wondered what the first season of might have looked like had the merely-hinted-at supernatural elements become more than merely hinted at, then The Outsider gives you a possible answer. Starting as a grim and gritty police procedural, the show takes a left turn in the third episode, before diving head-first into the supernatural in the sixth and seventh. And do these two tones mix well? Kind of. The early episodes are easily the strongest, and as the hokey horror elements start to take over, the foreboding portentousness of those beautifully constructed episodes gives way to Stephen King-isms. Relatable themes such as guilt and the paralysis of grief are dropped in favour of larger (and thus more abstract) issues such as the infectious nature of evil and the ability of ordinary people to band together in extraordinary circumstances (as I said, it's King-101). But for all that, and despite the not entirely successful mixing of genres, I enjoyed the show. I hadn't read the novel, and so I was genuinely invested in finding out where all of everything led. And even though the journey (the early stages, in particular), proved more interesting than the destination, it was a journey that I don't regret taking.

Cherokee City, Georgia. When the badly mutilated corpse of a young boy, Frankie Peterson, is found in the woods, homicide detective Ralph Anderson (the always excellent Ben Mendelsohn) immediately launches an investigation. Within a few hours, it appears the murderer has been identified, with multiple witnesses reporting seeing local little league coach and school teacher Terry Maitland (Jason Bateman) covered in blood near the scene of the crime. When physical evidence and surveillance footage further point to Terry's guilt, a bull-headed Ralph has Terry arrested in front of the whole town. As Terry's wife, Glory, (a suitably frazzled Julianne Nicholson) and his lawyer, Howie Solomon (Bill Camp; as good as he always is), scramble to understand what has happened, Terry maintains his innocence, saying he was at a teaching conference in another state on the day of the murder, a claim soon backed up by irrefutable evidence. But how can one person be in two places at once?

Airing on HBO, and based on the 2018 novel by Stephen King, the show was adapted for TV by acclaimed novelist Richard Price. Showrunners/executive producers include Price and Jason Bateman (who also co-stars and directs the first two episodes, establishing the Ozark-esque aesthetic template). Novelist Dennis Lehane also contributes scripts for two of the later episodes.

If the show has a singular standout element (aside from the excellent ensemble cast), it's the aesthetic design. Bateman, who has directed multiple episodes of Ozark, establishes a dark and gritty tone in the first two episodes, imbuing every shot with a foreboding sense of unease. Shadows abound; bright colours are muted, with greys and washed-out blues dominating; characters are often shown isolated in long shot, framed in doorways, or pushed into corners; depth of field is often extremely shallow; camera movements are methodical and slow; the editing is non-linear enough to keep the narrative slightly off-kilter (although this non-linearity is confined primarily to the first two episodes and the opening of episode nine); there's even a split-diopter used at one point to keep the foreground and background in perfect focus. The show looks every inch an HBO prestige crime drama. There are also some nice directorial flourishes. For example, in the last episode (directed by Andrew Bernstein), as the good guys are moving through a cave, they pass a body of water and we see the villain's eyes non-diegetically reflected in the water, taking up almost all of the screen's real-estate. Sure, it's not subtle, but it looks good.

Perhaps the most noticeable aesthetic element is the discordant score by Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans, which helps the atmosphere, tone, and pacing immeasurably. Music cues are often just one deep note, held and elongated for up to two or three seconds. Oftentimes, entire scenes will be scored to these singular notes, giving whatever is on screen a sense of portentousness beyond the purely visual.

For all its aesthetic gymnastics, however, the show does have some problems both stylistic and narrative. For one thing, it's too long; eight episodes would have been more than sufficient to tell this story, and the narrative really starts to drag in episodes five and six. It picks up again in eight (which is largely a character-focused episode), but there's just not enough material to fill 10+ hours. There's also the genre-mixing mentioned earlier. What starts as a tough cop investigating a grisly murder morphs into a quirky paranormal sleuth chasing down an ancient evil, and as these two vie for space, neither genre feels fully developed. The early episodes are creepy and unnerving, with tone and atmosphere doing the heavy lifting. But as the show goes on, the horror becomes broader and less effective, and Price is never really able to fully yoke these two disparate elements into a cohesive whole.

Other problems (presumably) come from the source text, such as the first solid transition into the supernatural, which is based on a coincidence so preposterous that I was convinced the show would return to it to offer an explanation (it does not). There's also the merry band of blue-collar salt-of-the-Earth types who band together to face something beyond any one of them, a trope that King has done to death by this stage.

All in all though, I enjoyed The Outsider for the most part. It has significant problems, but it does a lot right. The aesthetics and acting help a hell of a lot, and although it's far from the best King adaptation ever made (that would remain The Green Mile), it's a damn sight better than recent efforts such as the two It films and (shudder) The Dark Tower.

First 2 episodes were very promising and intriguing, directed by Justin Bateman who also performed as a main character. Then the next 8 episodes feel so long, dragging along the story with slow development and minor characters mixing it up.

The reason I kept watching was because of Cynthia Erivo's wonderful performance as Holly. Positive note to Ben Mendonsohn acting too.

In the end, I feel this could have been an 5 episode series or a 2h movie.

I was afraid to begin this serie cause i have two little babies, and the story what i've read soo disturbing... BUT im really glad that i've been watching this cause its as good as the another stephen king inspired series the Castle Rock or even BETTER YET!! The story the actors, the director (THANK YOU MR BATEMAN!!) is so good. I can recommend to everyone who have a bit stronger heart and stomach. But you will not regret it! I wont spoil anything, JUST PLEASE START TO WATCH AND ENJOY every minute that it can give to you!!

The Outsider is a suspenseful supernatural thriller that will have you guessing throughout the entire season. David Fincher created another hit in a long line of them for him. This isn't his best show but it's still pretty darn good. The Outsider is based off Steven Kings novel and is one of his better adaptations to tv. It starts off with what seems like a straight forward ugly killing of a kid. But when a supernatural creature is brought into the equation it leads the investigators to question everything they believe in. It has a fantastic cast led by Jason Bateman, Ben Mendelsohn and Cynthia Erivo.

Kings books adapt to tv readily and over the decades we have had a lot of motion pictures based on his work. These series came out in 2020 and it is based on a book that was published in 2018. I was curious to see how this compared to his staple from the 90s and earlier, of which we have all seen plenty.

The story here is extremely simple, with a highly obscured plot and drawn out scenes. Characters come and go after completing their task of seeding new information to move things along, which is also a King normalcy. Sadly this creates some unpleasant disappearances of characters and skip overs of scenes that should have been included. There are also several details that are shown to the viewer that will connect things before the cast itself realizes it. It is a good touch as it engages the audience and makes you feel as if you are participating in some manner with the script. Speaking of script, i cannot say how close it is to the book, not having read it but it feels very much like a King story.

The first 2 episodes are the best and the strongest. After that, the show plateaus and never grasps that energy and suspense that it had prior. You are just chugging along it feels like and too many filler scenes that really have no purpose come to mind.

The script grapples with generic good vs evil and handling grief and how it impacts people. In the way it does that it does try to tie it into the main plot but does not do a good job. It feels as if you are watching two different things. An occult movie and some drama counselor relationship soap opera, complete with irrational and downright annoying at times characters.

The series is very bad at keeping track of time and you will be lost very soon until you have no idea how much time has passed. There are flashback scenes that suffer from the same issue even though on some they tell you how long ago it occurred, but in the end it does not help with "present day" timing. I am not a fan of productions that obfuscate timelines. I consider it a cheap easy way out for the writers to not have to be accountable about what they put in. Keeping a coherent timeline can really become a chore so they often distort it until it is not a factor. Plenty of that here.

By the time we get to the final episode I had one question only. It was a simple question based on the sum of everything that occurred and everything that was about to happen. That question was, how do you explain everything to everybody else. That plot hole was coming closer and closer. Well, surprisingly somebody in production had the same question and they do a few scenes where they do cover that. Sadly it feels that the only reason it works based on what we are shown is because everybody else in the story universe is actually quite stupid so they buy the absolute nonsense that the recurring characters sell at the end. None of it would hold any water but for the purposes of covering that gaping plot hole, it stitches it a bit. I will give them credit for realizing and trying to do something about it.

As a last note, in reference to the timeline in the series, when on earth is this supposed to take place... The universe is an odd mix of 80s, lots of 90s with current day technology sprinkled in there. Obviously it is not supposed to be any particular date but the whole staging is so deliberate in achieving this weird mix of eras that it made me think if there was a reason behind it at all, and i could not find one. I have to scrap it up to visual distraction and tailoring things to have just the right tech when you need it but not enough to actually have an impact. That's a lot of timeline cheating in my book.

7\10 Worth watching.