The Dead Outside

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.

A small budget, a few unknown actors, a secluded farm, a global epidemic that turns people into violent lunatics. It COULD work. But it doesn't.

The script has serious problems: it moves too slowly, and ultimately goes nowhere. We have the troubled guy, and the troubled girl. Both have issues. They have to depend on each other to survive, while overcoming their ghosts. All this is established early on, but dragged through ineffective flashbacks and poor dialogue, for far too long.

The infected are too few and far between, and never seem like a real menace. Two people with a crappy rifle and some barbed wire manage to fend them off easily. The doors and windows aren't even reinforced. Most of the time, they could as easily be there on (a very very boring) vacation, rather than in the middle of a world apocalypse.

The characters are not interesting. The guy is dull and clueless. The girl is always annoyed AND annoying. The other girl is just as dull as the guy, and doesn't bring anything new. Their past stories should give us new insights about them, but don't. The (possible) immunity subplot is never properly explored, or settled. Its just thrown in for the sake of it, like too many things in the movie.

Overall, "The Dead Outside" does have some upsides (for a post-apocalyptic movie) - a sense of isolation and lack of hope, a few (very few) mild scares, and the cinematography isn't great, but its watchable. But by the end, you're wondering which is worse: being infected, or being a part of this sad, boring bunch.

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.

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.

Bear in mind, if you haven't watched this movie, that we're talking about a mean, low-budget, in your face little movie. You won't have seen the actors before (unless you know them personally) and there is nothing "fancy" to be found here, neither in the camera work, nor in the story department.

But it works for the movie. Not bloody, but suspenseful and with a dramatic story, that tries to stay as real as it can be (with a story like that). The actors do a good job, carrying the job, which plays mostly at one location. It might be slow at times (or might seem not moving story-wise), but it really is good, if you let yourself immerse in it.