Outcast

This was really just meant to be a filler film for me at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, I just thought I'd cram in as many films as possible and went along to a late night showing of Outcast.

It was actually really really good, and compared to the pap you get to see these days if you turn up at the cinema expecting horror fare, extraordinary. Successful horror plunges deep into fears that we have, here there's some really good stuff about sexual insecurity and fear of one's own burgeoning sexuality during adolescence, fear of pregnancy, fear of homelessness, anger about parental domination.

It's a story about Mary (played by Kate Dickie - the lead in Red Road) and her adolescent son Fergal (Niall Bruton). They're on the run and hiding in an Edinburgh housing estate. The mother clearly has supernatural capabilities and is being hunted by Cathal (James Nesbitt) who has been temporarily given similar supernatural capabilities. It's a ritualistic hunt. Nesbitt usually plays debonair blarney-spouting roles but is cast against type as the baddie here, which is quite refreshing.

There's some sort of underground feudalism going on as well, as Cathal crosses territory and has to ask a gentleman called The Laird for permission to hunt on his grounds. Maybe some secret yearnings for the feudal past going on here. What works well with all the supernatural stuff is that it's hinted that there are much larger issues at play, but these are left as mysterious.

Fergal wants to hang with Petronella, a lovely wee lassie with a short skirt who is intent on laying him from the moment he arrives on the estate. There's a good young love story here and as well a good sex scene. Mary is very keen for Fergal to stay away from Petronella and insistently suppresses him. There are some very creepy scenes where Mary dominates Fergal and warns him away from girls.

The special effects scenes work really well, but I don't want to spoil those for you, I would just say though that I felt they produced a good personification of some of the fears I've been referring to.

Anyway this is a film I would describe as a cauldron of angst and desire, I think it deserves to be seen, the audience applauded spontaneously at the end, if it didn't at least get a wide release in Scotland, that would be a tragedy. Walking back to my hotel that night (a long walk) was damned spooky given I was in the location of the movie!

First off, I don't understand why some people were so critical of this film. Having watched countless terrible so called movies from the horror genre this last year, very few could hold my attention. Yes, I will agree, it started of a wee bit slow, and yes at times you didn't know who to like more, the hunters or the hunted. Personally I thought this was quite refreshing. The setting was wonderful for an ex-pat Scot like myself, it's a pity more movies aren't made in Scotland. Of course there are parallels with Let me in, but the whole gypsy/druidic slant was nice and the acting on the whole was more than adequate and a lot better than low budget American movies where recently the actors seem to be hitting all time new lows in believability or likability. I thought this film kept my interest right up to the end, the ending wasn't as predictable as people make out, as the director really did paint quite a ambiguous slant to the main protagonist (or was that protagonists?). Anyway, for all fans of Edinburgh and people who want more from a horror movie than just another slasher psycho you should come away with few disappointments. Serious thrills are few, so I might well put this more in a supernatural category rather than horror. I think the problem with recent horror is it's hard to top the excesses of Saw and few have the storytelling genius of a director like Guillermo Del Toro to eke out a superb horror without an excess of gore. To sum up, a good attempt at a Scottish LET ME IN, not incredible but compared with recent dross a must see for horror fans who are waiting in vain for another great film like The Shining.

What do you get if you cross the plot of Let The Right One In with the special effects of a budget Hulk movie, then set it all in Trainspotting territory, with a bunch of Irish Gypsy mumbo jumbo thrown in for good measure. Well, fairly obviously, you get low budget horror thriller Outcast.

Intense, witchy Mary and her teenage son Fergal (Kate Dickie and Niall Bruton) are on the run. But when they set fire to their van and accept a scummy council tenancy in a run-down scheme on the outskirts of Edinburgh, it appears that their days on the road are over. Big mistake, as mysterious, tattooed, radge hit-man Cathal (James Nesbitt) is hot on their heels, tracking them down using bizarre divining rituals involving pigeons' entrails. Well, it's hardly as if the reclusive pair are on Facebook.

But while Mary sets about weaving protective spells around their flat, Fergal is off getting to know his new neighbourhood, and in particular feisty 'teenager' Petronella (Hanna Stanbridge), who spends her days caring for her mentally disabled brother while her alcoholic mother lies sprawled on the sofa sleeping off the grog. But as a sudden, awkward and rather unlikely romance starts to blossom, Cal is closing in, having been given the go ahead by the local gypsy king or Laird (played, of course, by James Cosmo, as it is illegal to make a film in Scotland without offering him a part).

All sounds a bit strange. Well, it is, but it's also gory, gritty and weirdly compelling – although not always terribly convincing. Perhaps I just have trouble believing there's black magic taking place on my bus route. Or indeed that such cheesy, playground black magic could be so immediately effective – Rosemary's Baby this ain't.

But that aside, this is a brave film that's genuinely trying to do something different, and while the result is at times cheap and patchy, it's also like nothing you've seen before, a sort of dysfunctional Mike Leigh film for the Twilight generation.

Now where did I put my jar of blood and pile of dead birds? I'm off to cast a spell on a traffic warden…

See more of my reviews at www.elainemacintyre.net 8-)

I don't tend to be a huge fan of modern day British horror, so it's refreshing to see something this smart, original and entertaining. Writer/director Colm McCarthey has crafted here a supernatural kitchen sink horror that entwines both aspects with skill, unobtrusive social comment and psychological intensity. The film follows Fergal and his mother Mary, set up in a flat on a run down estate, though mysterious hunters are after them and both Mary and Fergal have things to hide, brooding concerns that unfold during the course of the film. I've kept this summary vague because a lot of the fun here comes in watching things unfold, but let's just say that spell-casting strangeness, mythology and violent death are involved. Beyond the plot mechanics lie the real interests of the film, brought out partly in setting and characters and as strongly in the assortment of fine acting turns at hand. The film is concerned with family and culture and their tensions, characters have an assortment of backgrounds, Irish, Scottish, Polish and less defined varieties of "other". Conflicts mount, based not on easy illustrations of racism but family ties, sexual fears and adolescence, the film has even its minor characters picking through a minefield and an ever present feel that its gritty locales could erupt. Speaking of gritty locales, the cinematography of Darran Teirnan does a great job of grounding everything in recognisable reality, with palpable run-down atmosphere. The character seeth as much as the setting, Kate Dickie is most powerful as Mary, high strung, unsettling in the clammy closeness of her concerns for Fergal and convincingly, even erotically pagan during her supernatural scenes. Niall Bruton is effective as Fergal, a quiet and haunted fellow with a certain inner grace, yearning and sympathetic edge. Hanna Stanbridge stands out as an earthy and foul mouthed but irresistibly attractive fellow tenant with the hots for Fergal, good contrast to the wilder goings on, while James Nesbitt is great as a grimly determined, ambitious and shifty hunter. Outcast moves at a quick pace, though horror junkies should note that the film is as driven by drama of the more conventional kind as it is horror hi-jinks. Gore and effects are used sparingly but to good effect, with the distinct advantage of being fairly unusual in their use. The only significant problem here is some of the shaky camera work used, though once or twice it is good at conveying an impression without showing too much, it detracts from the climax where a better view of proceedings would have been much appreciated. Altogether, I thought this one rather ace, it takes a little getting into and the contrast of setting and shenanigans will undoubtedly jar for a fair few viewers, but for me pretty well everything worked great. A solid recommendation from me then, 8/10.

Well, this movie was sort of interesting in some ways, and dreadfully boring in others.

The good parts about the movie was the setting, being in a run down apartment building, so there was sort of a gritty feel to the movie. And also the characters were quite interesting.

"Outcast" provides you with a somewhat good enough cast for the roles in the movie. Ciarán McMenamin, playing Liam (one of the two hunters) actually did a quite nice job in the movie. As did Hanna Stanbridge, playing Petronella. And despite having a really small role in the movie, then James Cosmo brought his usual grace to the movie. Just a shame that he didn't have more screen time.

The movie takes a long time to build up its thrills, and when they do climax, it is sort of a disappointment, because nothing much actually does happen. You sit around, waiting and waiting, but nothing fruitful happens. Now, I am not saying that the movie is all together bad, it just drags on for a very long time. And the story told in "Outcast" proved interesting enough in a way.

What killed off the movie experience for me was the time the movie took to get from A to B, with very little happening in between. Had there been more action and a quicker pace to it, this movie would have been awesome.

And the 'beast', well what little you did see of it actually looked promising enough, but not nearly enough was shown of the creature in my opinion, and that also brought down the movie a notch. I like to see what we are dealing with, not being kept in the dark with only rare glimpses of what is out there.

In overall, the movie had great potential, it was just killed off by its slow, dull pace. And that was a shame.