The Outwaters

The Outwaters is a relatively ambitious but ultimately boring and self-indulgent Found Footage film. Despite the clear effort, and some truly excellent sequences- the majority of this film is very boring and lacks a clear direction. There is almost no characterization, very little plot, and very annoying sound design. Considering the circumstances around this movie (the budget, and the fact that this is basically a one man mission) - You can't help but be impressed at this ambitious mess at times. I hope that this director continues to improve, being a fellow New-Jerseyan, but I will never be re-visiting this one.

First off I will say that I very much enjoy horror movies, be it action, found footage, si-fi, oldschool, etc. A good movie is a good movie, but this however is not. I have never written a review before for any movie but this one was so bad that I was compelled to. I paid for this movie and with about 30mins left I had to shut it off, it was just that bad. The plot was terrible, it made no sense whatsoever, there was nothing connecting me to a single character. The footage gave me a headache considering most of the movie is shot looking at a pinhole flashlight. I hate to say it but... garbage.

This movie is somehow very comparable to Skinamarink and that's not a good thing at all. You have absolutely no idea what's going on the entire runtime and it's full of horrible filmmaking with extremely dark shots with a flashlight every once in a while. If the darkness bothers you, don't worry because you'll end up getting screams and running with no context. If that doesn't bother you then you'll just be treated to random footage thrown together going from night to day and so on and so on. I really don't know what the heck was going on in this movie. If it's this easy to make a movie then maybe I need to pick up my iPhone and just start shooting random footage and ask a studio to buy my horribly shot movie and release it theatrically to piss everyone off. Apparently it's that's easy in 2023.

Horrible. I'd honestly rather watch paint dry. It's like watching someone's home movies for much longer than you want to; home movies of someone you don't even really know all that well. Pure torture. I'm not sure what people are smoking when they say it's the most terrifying movie they've ever seen, because I wasn't terrified one bit; just bored to death. And the characters? Oh my, they were so annoying. I honestly wanted them to get it in the end because they deserved it after the pain it put us through. I cannot believe this movie gets compared to Blair Witch because it is not even in the same galaxy of greatness.

You won't know what's going on. But not in a "over your head" artistic kind if way. More of a "not going to explain it because I don't know how" bad filmmaker kind of way.

The story is non-existent and won't ever be explained so don't hold your breath. And again, not explaining your story isn't artistic, it's lazy. High concepts are confusing. But confusion isn't high concept.

The acting is good and the poor cast shines early when the movie is setting up for its terrible 2nd and 3rd acts.

Look I'm an expert in found footage. I've seen them all. I love the genre and I can even find beauty and meaning in the Bad Ben series of films.

But THIS? Skip it. It's just a mish mash of gore and severely limited views. What an overrated mess. Omg.