They're Outside

The best part of this movie is the acting. I really think that the two leads did a great job with their characters. They were interesting to watch and they were both very vivid, in different ways. I wasn't thrilled with the artificial romance, but otherwise the characters were good.

The story was good. Not great, but good. The villain was new and fit the story. There were not a lot of scares in this, but it was fun to watch and much better than I expected.

There are already quite a lot of found footage movies based on the premise that a social media personality undertakes a particular project, so in order for a new film which uses this premise to set itself apart, the project has to incorporate some innovative idea.

THEY'RE OUTSIDE does that: a youtuber with a channel called "Psychology Inside Out" who documents his efforts to help people with various mental issues sets himself the challenge of helping a woman who suffers from agoraphobia (often called a "fear from open spaces" but more accurately a fear from situations from which it is difficult to escape, which, of course, can include open spaces). She has not consciously set foot outside of her house in five years, for fear of a local legend called Green Eyes.

The film actually provides a 5 minute prologue which explains this legend; suffice it to say that according to it, those cursed by Green Eyes first hear a knock on the door, then get lost in endless woods, and finally find the so called "Green House" which bodes very ill for them. The woman is afraid of leaving her house because she thinks she has heard the knock and fears getting lost in the woods surrounding her home.

I was unable to verify whether this is an actual local legend or just made up for the movie. There is an English Folk Custom called "Jack in the Green", but it seems to be something different, though the movie contains scenes which evidently depict it.

One thing the movie does well is that as events proceed, we learn new and unexpected things about the main characters, and these become key plot points in the story. This brings a new perspective on them and helps keep audience interest.

The legend leaves little room for a gradual build-up of suspense, since already after hearing the knock it condemns a person to become lost forever, but the movie seems to get around this by applying it inconsistently. For example, early on, the youtuber seems to hear the knock but doesn't get lost. Be that as it may, there is a little bit of escalation, mainly due to the new things we learn about the characters in the course of the movie.

One thing that may turn some people off is that the youtuber treats those around him quite arrogantly, so much so that he essentially devolves into the pseudoskeptic caricature. As a reminder, when it comes to paranormal phenomena, a skeptic is someone who advocates no position but only attempts to evaluate evidence provided by those who advocate a position, whereas a pseudoskeptic is someone who says that they advocate no position but in reality advocates the position that all paranormal phenomena are bunk. In general, skeptics have done a rather poor job of calling out pseudoskeptics in their midst, and that is perhaps why the cliche tends to be common.

The youtuber's arrogance has to be regarded as a classic example of a tragic flaw, since he he intends well and genuinely tries to help the woman, yet the flaw ultimately leads to their disappearance (mentioned right at the start of the film, so not really a spoiler).

The acting in the film is well above average for found footage movies, as is the cinematography. Yet, despite all the things going for it, OUTSIDE could not excite me very much.

There are some things the characters do which are left unexplained (for example, what is the reason for the tree carvings and why was that activity not subject to the curse?) and the ending feels rather anticlimactic. I'm not sure whether this has anything to do with the subliminal shots of the ending throughout key scenes in the movie or not.

OUTSIDE tells a very different story from your average found footage movie, so I would expect that even among found footage fans, it will elicit mixed reactions. Probably, those who like folk horror or movies with a psychological emphasis are more likely to enjoy it.

I am a fan of found footage movies and always give them a watch whether they are good or bad and as fans of this genre know there are more bad than good out there.

This little film could have been more in the side of good than bad but it doesn't because of two small little details the filmmakers forgot about.

The first one is making it scary, there were no scary parts in the whole film, even green eyes was laughable.

The second was the ending, once again it looked as if the filmmakers ran out of ideas and just decided to end the movie.

In the plus side the acting was way above par for this kind of movie and I wasn't bored by the film.

It's a shame really that the actors involved were very good at their job but given a dreadful script. Let's hope they get a chance of doing another film together that will be worth watching.

Attempting to film a new documentary piece, a Youtube psychologist and his assistant head out to help a woman conquer her agoraphobia, but when his studies end up arousing the spirit of a local legendary deity that lives in the area must try to work through the issue before it's too late.

This was a pretty unenjoyable genre effort. Among the more intriguing features here is the overall setup here mixing together the folklore of the area with the initial documentary approach of the main film. After the brief intro that prepares the legend of the town boogeyman and his connection to the village, this early work is done here to establish the setup going forward and how she needs to be treated with his presence. That allows the later scenes showing the effects of her mental condition and how the legend has affected her leading up to the finale where it manages to offer up the kind of chilling reveal that makes for a rather dark reveal however, this is really all that holds this one up with the potential zapped from this one quite easily. There are some big problems with the film. The major drawback is that the film's central relationship we're supposed to be following isn't in the slightest bit interesting or worthwhile. Frankly, he's not that compelling a person to follow here, being argumentative and pushy while completely disregarding anyone else around him who even dares to say anything contrary to his single-minded mission that causes her to regress more than anything helpful. As well, with that behavior turned toward his girlfriend resulting in an antagonistic relationship which eventually blows up in his face with cheating allegations in addition to the numerous times he shuts her down for anything, it's really hard to make him to be a sympathetic figure for us to follow. The other factor here is that with the film spending the majority of its running focused solely on getting to the bottom of her issues with agoraphobia, it's not that interesting or exciting for large portions of time. The three-person focus here detailing plenty of these factors involved in the treatment that isn't involving or sympathetic, much less scary since so little of this is tense or thrilling. With the random introduction of potentially creepy ideas from the security camera footage done to show her outside to the faked videos and the revelation cut that shows what's really going on, it all just seems to come off chaotically rather than out of any sort of logical build-up which makes for a rather depressing and detrimental effort for the most part.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Language and Violence.

I think the concept of this movie was interesting. An agoraphobic who can't leave her house has an actual supernatural reason to not leave her house. A psychologist bets he can get her out of her house in ten days. Things go bad very quickly. This all sounds fine and dandy, but then the man starts talking and never shuts up. Ever. The more he rambles on, the more I can't stand him. The agoraphobic barely moves or speaks, so I never did care about her. There are no scary moments in this movie. I do know this. Forget the ten days. I would have been out of that house in ten minutes just to get away from hearing the man drone on and on about how I should get out of that house. I gave it an extra star because the actor really made me dislike his character.