“Found footage” horrors often receive a bad rap because it’s presumed that they’re “easy” movies to make: scrounge together a couple thousand dollars, a consumer video camera, some amateur actors, and a loose lore around something eerie that can guarantee jump scares.  Yes, the “found footage” sub-genre is one of the more resourceful outlets for DIY filmmakers, but there’s an art to it.  They may not trick audiences anymore into thinking the stories are non-fictitious but, with the right team, these movies can still be very scary and unsettling.

The team behind The Outwaters are not even close to figuring out how this sub-genre works, or how filmmaking and storytelling work either.  The story is loose, but the “found footage” techniques are all wrong.  Instead of improving on their own work, the filmmakers label their movie as an experimental endeavour, equipped with lots of audio and visual cues that they believe will pull viewers into the madness that’s being experienced on screen.  But when these experimental qualities are reduced to annoying camerawork and frantic editing, the viewer feels shut out from what the film is trying to convey.

The Outwaters has a creepy premise that’s more fun to talk about and brainstorm on than to actually watch it play out.  A small crew travels to the Mohave Desert to shoot a music video and, soon, they feel the vastness of their environment closing in on them.  Writer/director Robbie Banfitch frames this story from memory cards recovered by the Mojave County police department in February 2022 (the music video crew vanished in 2017).  After hearing a disturbing 9-1-1 call that’s never acknowledged again, the film starts playing through each card – the first card features character introductions, the second card suggests something isn’t right in the desert, and the third is bombastic, blood-drenched chaos.  It’s a very clunky narrative structure (especially during the first two memory cards) that offers more redundant information than relevant bits.

When The Outwaters moves into its third act, it’s desperate to spook the audience with vague imagery, untethered camerawork, and rubbery body horror effects.  The narrative also leaps through time to add an extra layer of disorientation.  However, there’s a difference between disorientation and confusion;  The Outwaters is much more of the latter because of the purposeful lack of comprehension.  This means the viewer can’t invest in the danger, making each random image that flashes on screen (usually seen from a narrow viewpoint, covered in a milky coating of lame blood) fall flat with a *thud*.

The Outwaters is the work of a smug filmmaker who is assuming it doesn’t take much effort to make a horror movie.  Banfitch flaunts a formula, but litters it with drawn-out exposition and illogical style choices (like music over the montages – did the cops add the tunes before submitting the evidence?).  Banfitch has creepy ideas, but he’s unable to work them into the story.  And when all else fails: slather everything in blood, jostle the camera, and call it “experimental”.

The Outwaters is not only in the running for “worst movie of the year”, it’s one of the worst “found footage” flicks ever made.

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Addison Wylie: @AddisonWylie