The Dead Outside

Six months after a horrible virus has decimated the United Kingdom and turned its victims into crazed zombies, a young man named "Daniel" (Alton Milne) drives to a deserted house in Scotland to take refuge for the night. However, when he wakes up the next morning, he finds himself staring down the barrel of a rifle held by a woman by the name of "April" (Sandra Louise Douglas). Realizing that this woman means business, he quickly apologizes and, to his relief, she allows him to stay on one more day before hitting the road again. Although he finds that she is both angry and aloof, he manages to convince her to allow him to stay a little longer and its during this time that they begin to understand each other a little better due in large part to the personal tragedies each of them have recently been through. Unfortunately, things become much more complicated when another uninfected person named "Kate" (Sharon Osdin) shows up and changes the dynamic to a degree that neither of them expected. Now, although the overall plot was hardly unique, I thought that this film might have some potential based, in part. On where it was filmed. Sadly, this was not to be the case as the director (Kerry Anne Mullaney) failed to give any of the actors a coherent script and instead chose to use a series of garbled flashbacks to reveal key aspects. Needless to say, I don't think this was a good decision by any stretch of the imagination. Not only that, but the ending was much too vague and could have used considerable clarification as well. That being said, I don't consider this to be a good film and I have rated it accordingly. Below average.

Completely derivative, and not very rewarding. Although the talent of the filmmakers involved is evident, they sabotage themselves by working with completely empty content. Badly written, badly acted and repetitive, the film failed to justify its running time. THE DEAD OUTSIDE works for about 15 minutes, after which its lack of momentum makes it hard to sit through. I suspect it would probably have made a good short film, however.

It has been mentioned that the film "expects a lot from its audience", but this isn't quite true. There was far too much exposition in some scenes. The characters and their stories are simply not very interesting. It's a common thing to see in an indie, but the extent to which bad acting can weigh down even a good script *cannot* be overstated. I'm sure THE DEAD OUTSIDE will be the cast and crew's ticket to bigger/better things, but as a cinema experience it simply is not up to par.

I'll try and contextualize my score by listing scores for the last couple of indies I've seen:

RULE OF THREE (Eric Shapiro). Good acting for an indie. Reasonably good Script. Terribly shot, terrible music. 5/10

INK (Jamin Winans). Some pretty good ideas, hugely ambitious and elaborate production. Weak execution and bad acting. 5/10

SHALLOW GROUND (Sheldon Wilson). A bloody mess. Nonsensical plot. An exercise in pointlessness. 3/10

THE DEAD OUTSIDE (Kerry Anne Mullaney). A technically competently lensed film, but lacking any real focus or originality. Badly acted, boring script, repetitive sound design. 4/10

Scotland is full of angry people in poor health. No, not a quote from the Scottish tourist board website but the premise for this dreadful talky movie. Anyway, there's some kind of virus that's turned most people mental. You'll note straight away that there are no 'dead' as the title might suggest, certainly no traditional zombies. Instead you get shouting people who are nowhere near as entertaining and certainly never present a credible threat. So, no zombies in this one.

There's no action either, but if you're a fan of wobbling camera angles and flashbacks you're going to get your moneys worth here. This really is a dull movie, nothing really happens for an hour and the finale isn't interesting either. If that wasn't enough the acting is generally poor and the bleak colourless scenery gets tiresome pretty quickly.

While I must admit that I wasn't expecting much, this film turned out pretty good! Story was more complex and psychological than I expected. Left me wondering how such a low-budget effort could resonate more than the last 5 big-budget films I've watched combined. The ending in most films lets them down, there's nothing worse than a bad ending. Dead Outside pulled out all the stops and tied it all up with a bow, great little atmospheric film. Oddly creepy at times with them surviving in the old run down farmhouse, waiting for something bad to happen. This film is similar to The Fog in its atmosphere of dread but set in the Scottish Borderlands.. with the infected acting as the backdrop for the narrative.. and some ghosts for good measure! Haunting and well worth a watch.

Reading some of these reviews it seems like some other reviewers just want to add big words to make themselves look like they're some kind of 'serious' movie know-it-all. Gimme a break!

This film was made in 2 weeks on a £4,000 budget. Those 2 snippets of info should have been a bit of a hint at what kind of production this was gonna be. Yeah the story runs along the lines of 28 Days Later, so what? It's not as if 28 Days Later was the first film to use the virus/living dead scenario, and I doubt this will be the last.

The story is a simple one. Virus on the loose, survivors hiding in an attempt to stay alive. If you're looking for a blood soaked zombie flick then pass on this and pick up Dawn Of The Dead. If you're looking for an indie flick that focuses more on the psychological horror of the survivor's situation then you'll enjoy this. OK it's not gonna win any Oscars, but hey, neither did The Shawshank Redemption!