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| Courtesy of Cinedigm Corp. |
Can the
found footage subgenre of science-fiction and horror be experimental or even
abstract? Is a lot of money needed to
generate a phantasmagoria of audiovisual sensory overload? Do you need to know what’s happening in order
to feel suffocated by unpleasantness?
This question was posed to mixed audience reception by the experimental
lo-fi Shudder indie Skinamarink which
relied less on slasher elements than going for an implacable murky sense of
unease and now is taken to an even further logical extreme with indie actor/producer/director
Robbie Banfitch’s Mojave desert glug of found footage Ayahuasca The Outwaters. Already two films into the beginning of 2023,
we’ve seen some indelible examples of truly from the ground up homemade horror
somehow or another gracing multiplexes.
Strange times indeed to be a horror fan.
Bookended
by a 911 phone call with terrifying implications, the film opens a bit like The Blair Witch Project with police
evidence of footage from recovered SIM cards following four bandmates into the
Mojave desert intending to shoot a music video.
Initially a straightforward bit of storytelling involving these kids
frolicking around getting good shots for their video, soon they begin hearing
explosions outside of their tent at night.
Then without warning the film starts panicking and devolves into an
increasingly abstract cacophony of lights, sounds, rapid flashes and glimpses
of blood and entrails amid screams human and oddly demonic. Later still, the film’s cameraman ends up
alone and relentlessly pursued by screaming snakelike intestines and beams of
light that feels more and more like the Stargate David Bowman plunges into at
the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Less of
a piece of storytelling than an endurance test dropping you the viewer into a
psychedelic waking nightmare where beautiful broad daylight is just as
threatening as the tiny flashlight visions of night, The Outwaters isn’t interested in explaining itself so much as it
intends to overwhelm your senses. There’s
a relentlessness to this piece that feels almost menacing, like you the viewer
are being pummeled and kicked while you’re down. Viewers keen on the found footage subgenre
are in for a bumpy ride not even they will be able to put their finger on. Not everyone will like or take to this, let’s
be honest, throwback to experimental 60s filmmaking evoking the abstract
minimalism of Dada artists trying to create an experience nobody wants to
have. The average horror goer, after a
while, is going to feel drained by this nonstop descend into a bottomless pit
of rabbit holes.
Visually
and sonically, the film looks as good as something of this nature should with
generally crisp digital photography handheld by Banfitch himself. Mostly however the film is a marvel of
editing with all the shaky confused difficult-to-see footage blended together
into a kind of tapestry that gets steadily harder on the eyes and ears. Though not quite going full Gaspar Noe on the
viewer’s sight and hearing, for a basically no-budget do-it-yourself endeavor
it comes startlingly close. The four
cast members comprising the nightmare are generally good though soon Banfitch
himself becomes the audience’s avatar, wading through a Hellscape that looks
like the Mojave desert but over time feels more and more unearthly.
This is
a difficult horror to recommend to people.
It is not for those keen on straightforward slasher or monster movie
thrills, instead going for a bizarre uncomfortable headspace that is drowned in
awfulness. Moreover, the film
deliberately starts to come apart piece by piece, devolving into a series of
affronting audiovisual abstractions where neither you or the poor cameraman Banfitch
are sure of what you’re witnessing. The
kind of film where you aren’t really sure of what to say about it after
absorbing and digesting it, The Outwaters
is something of a grand return of what was once thought to be a bygone era
of hallucinatory experimental avant garde filmmaking where the terror stems
from our confusion and how raw images of shapes and noises take the viewer on
the equivalent of a bad drug trip. Hard
to say what comes next after this and Skinamarink,
movies made on the cheap that somehow found ways to somewhat reinvent the
medium.
--Andrew Kotwicki
