Part of me was intrigued by 'The Outer Wild's' concept, if executed right it could have been fun and inventive with nice tension. The cover was reasonably cool if not an innovative one. With a less than inviting critical and audience reception, there was apprehension but with a concept with a lot of potential there was determination to go against the grain and at least find it watchable.
Alas, it was good potential completely ruined by irredeemably bad execution in for me one of the worst films of its type. 'The Outer Wild' was yet another film that was as bad as indicated by the things that made me apprehensive before watching. Really try not to take ratings to heart, and am almost all the time very good at that, and always watch films with an open mind despite how it sounds, but it was very hard to do that with 'The Outer Wild', having seen so many films recently that are lowly rated and poorly reviewed and they turned out to be that bad and worse. 'The Outer Wild' is one of those.
'The Outer Wild' looks like it was shot and edited on a limited budget and with very tight time constraints, it just looks so drab and chaotic with afterthought-like visual effects. Would have completely forgiven that if the rest of the film overcame that hurdle and had all the other components done well in spite of. That wasn't to be.
Nothing memorable about the music, which is over-bearingly recorded and not always very well placed. The direction has no life or personality, which severely hurts the film's momentum (continually long-winded) while there is nothing natural in the rambling and clumsy dialogue filled with utter gibberish that was impossible to take seriously.
Hurting 'The Outer Wild' most was the story, which was basically non-stop dullness and utter nonsense. So many parts are hard to follow, was completely lost most of the time, and usually my comprehension is just fine, being someone who has had no issue understanding films in the past that are criticised for being confusing (won't name them in order to be fair). There is no sense of danger which severely hurts any tension or suspense, no excitement thanks to the pacing being so plodding, no imagination and nothing unsettling. The ending is a tedious and pointless head-scratcher that fails to make sense.
Couldn't care at all for the characters, that one learns nothing about and they are basically sketchy stereotypes written in a distastefully biased way. Am not going to mention the acting due to all the performances being so forgettable. that nobody stands out.
Summing up, awful. 1/10 Bethany Cox
