Outcast.

It's October and I discovered a fun little game called '31 days of Halloween', simply put, you have to try and watch a horror film every day for each day of October. Simple enough, but a good excuse to watch those horror movies that have been sitting around on my 'To Watch' list for a while now. To be fair, I've already lost the game really, having only watched two horror films over the last three days. But oh well. Enjoy the review, anyway!

I digged Outcast, for reasons why, I'll get to later. For now I want you to understand that I understand why people hated this movie. Firstly, it's ultra low-key. Like it isn't even like a low budget movie, because it never tries to give a budget feel ever. This is ultra low-key. Like a whole battle between good and evil, magic and monsters is mainly done around a few gutted birds, a candle and some writing on some walls. But I think it works here, because British cinema doesn't have a lot of money, so it has an excuse. I can't excuse American movies doing the same thing because I know they have the money to produce so much more.

Secondly, it's weird. I seriously half expected the son and mother to fuck the way they acted around each other, awkward. I mean that isn't the only weird thing about the movie, but just that really stood out to me.

And finally, it's kinda confusing and doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. Like I don't know, somehow the movie explains itself without ever really explaining itself. Like, the characters talk about things they know as characters, but the audience is never filled in by. So we have crucial piece missing in every conversation which makes it confusing as hell. Plus they try really hard to ram in this romance subplot to make the ending make sense, yeah it doesn't work.

So from what I could gather from their conversations there are a clan of wizards and witches like everywhere, their clans split up into territories and they have a massive amount of honour between one another. There are strict rules and if you want to do anything magic related in someone else's territories, you ask politely and wait for their decision. I honestly don't know how they enforce this, but there we go. They are also hidden from humanity, so how Nesbitt's character knew about them I don't know. And if a witch has sex with a human they give birth to a monster, I think. And these people are born with powers, it seems but a human can have power too if he gets runes tattoo'd on him, it like enchants their flesh or something. And there is some ghost walking around, I think. I don't know, it's never very clear. It probably warrants a few more watches.

But as to why I digged it. I mentioned before in another review how British cinema takes a rather generic premise and then makes it uniquely British. Yeah, this film embodies that. The whole half demon boy having to be taken down by a magical cult in a gritty gothic setting is really nothing new. But making everyone Scottish, Irish or English and setting the majority of the film in a grotty Scottish council estate, you have a different movie entirely and one I really digged.

And well, that is kinda it. Like, the plot is only half explained. A mother and her son are on the run from a magic clan because her son is actually a monster is about the only coherent bit of the whole thing. The movie has a few red herrings, a few plot points that are never explained and some that make absolutely no sense but none of that really ever got in the way for me. It was dark, gritty, in places kinda sexy. And ultimately, really fucking British. And I loved that.

So do I recommend this? I'm pretty sure everyone in the universe likes either James Nesbitt, the Supernatural or British cinema. And so if you like only one of these things, I'm sure you can find something for you here.

Think About It!

-Locke.