The Outwaters (2022, Robbie Banfitch)

More often than not, it's not fair to compare a film to another in discussing whether or not it's good or successful. In the case of The Outwaters, a festival hit from writer/director Robbie Banfitch, it's so clearly and consciously influenced by The Blair Witch Project, it isn't only fair, the film invites it. It practically demands it.

The landscape is very different today than it was in 1999 when The Blair Witch Project and it's genius marketing campaign became a genuine cultural phenomenon, inserting itself into the zeitgeist beyond the usual circles of horror fans and horror creators. A film whose original shooting budget was $30,000 ended up on the cover Time magazine, inspiring battalions of imitators and spoofs, becoming part of the cultural lexicon. It's unlikely another micro-budget film, distributed by such a small company (the now defunct Artisan entertainment) will be able to so saturate the cultural consciousness after the end of mono-culture. It is likely to continue to be something of a beacon of hope for new and young horror creators though.

To be clear, The Blair Witch Project was such a success, the sense of it being lightning in a bottle was so pervasive, it took eight years for a major studio to try to capitalize on the use of the found footage/first person POV which was so central to Blair Witch's financial success and cultural impact. Oren Peli would take his inspiration from the scrappy, low budget ingenuity of Blair Witch, along with the first person POV, and apply it to Paranormal Activity, which hit theaters to similar financial success in 2007. That film would dethrone the Saw franchise from being the reigning juggernaut of the Halloween horror release season. It wouldn't be off base to refer to Blumhouse Pictures as "the house that Oren and Jordan built," because Blumhouse is a direct result of Jason Blum experience as a producer on the franchise, and it comes to the level of prominence it maintains today, because of Get Out. Cloverfield would be the first real attempt by a major studio to produce a major found footage/first person POV film, and it was financially successful, but that was 2008. It's very rare for a low budget horror film to reach anything near the success of The Blair Witch, and for an army of other low budget and major studio films to try to imitate that success. It wasn't until Paranormal Activity proved that success was replicable that the army of imitators began to arrive in theaters, on streamings services and VOD.

Unfortunately, too many of the imitations of both The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity aren't very good. There are genuinely outstanding "found footage" films out there, but there are many which were clearly inspired by the lure of low investment and high return, with only a passing interest in something like a good story or compelling characters. One of the downsides to the number of terrible imitators is that "found footage" has come to be thought of as a genre or sub genre, and in certain circles, the "cheap and easy genre for people who can't make a real movie." Realistically, "found footage" or first person point of view isn't even a genre, it's just a narrative perspective. It can be applied to any number of different genres or sub genres. The VHS anthology series is excellent as proof. It is exclusively horror, but after a number of installments of this solely first person POV anthology franchise, there might not be a horror sub genre left that it hasn't applied first person POV to.

Even "found footage" is a narrow narrative conceit which doesn't apply to all first person POV films. It's describing the idea that the footage we're seeing has literally been found, somewhere, by someone, as part of its narrative, a la The Blair Witch. We've even started applying the label to films which aren't all related to being "found footage." The Creep series is technically not "found footage." For all we know, within the world of the films, only two or three characters in either of those films has seen that footage. Part what makes it scary, part of what makes the overall narratives work, is that the footage hasn't been and probably won't be found.

The label has been applied to films like Lake Mungo, which even as it does apply to some of the footage in the film, that's not the narrative perspective. The narrative perspective is that of a faux documentary. The same can be said of The Poughkeepsie Tapes, although that film does contain more "found footage" where actual narrative is concerned. It's come to be an umbrella term for any narrative style which acknowledges the existence of a camera and an explanation for it being there, as opposed to the godlike sense of watching a story unfold without the characters knowing their being watched, which is the perspective of traditional fictional films. If it were released today, Spinal Tap would be called a found footage film. Best In Show is no more a "found footage" film than faux documentaries like Lake Mungo, but because Lake Mungo dabbles in horror tropes, it gets called found footage.

More recently, another narrative perspective/storytelling tool has evolved out of found footage/first person perspective, which is being called "screen life." These are films which take place from the perspective of a phone camera or a laptop and incorporate aspects of social media, apps and other internet based environment, usually using one video conferencing software or another. Unfriended unfolds from the perspective of a Skype conversation between teenage friends. Host is told from the perspective of a Zoom conversation. Deadstream combines the first person POV of films like The Blair Witch and adds in pieces of the user/creator experience of video based services YouTube or Twitch, blending the two together.

Robbie Banfitch's The Outwaters decided to eschew the evolution we've seen since The Blair Witch and go back to the basic skeletal premise of a small group with a camera, having a horrific experience in the wilderness. It's not quite reaching the financially or cultural heights of Blair Witch, but it did make an impact on the festival circuit and has good word of mouth. It's just become available for rent and purchase on all the major services, and is streaming for subscribers on Screambox, a relatively new horror focused streaming service competing with Shudder. I don't know why justwatch.com isn't listing it, but I watched it via Hoopla, a service that partners with libraries for free ebook, music and film rentals.

There's a certain level of creative courage in looking at the past twenty-four years of evolution in a form and deciding to strip all of it away and go back to the basics. I have no problem with a film wearing its influences on its sleeve. One of the things I find enjoyable is seeing different individuals running the same influences through their own perspective, and seeing just how differently two films clearly influenced by the same predecessor can end up being. Last years The Watcher was thrilling in part because of how clearly inspired by Hitchcock it is. To see a first time filmmaker (Chloe Okuno) with that depth of understanding of what made films like Vertigo and Rear Window work, and for them to be so disciplined in their application of those ideas to a film that is more than imitation, is exciting. It's the sign of a determined director, focused on narrative, with a firm grasp on the technical aspects of filmmaking that makes me eager to see more from them. Resurrection, another stunning film from 2022, also feels deeply influenced by Hitchcock, and at the same time is very different from The Watcher. Two different imaginations, taking in the same influences, produce very different results, both of which are great works in their own right.

The Outwaters suffers from a lack of focus on narrative. There is a clear understanding of the technical aspects of what made the scares in The Blair Witch work, but the lack of focus on narrative suggests there isn't an understanding or care that the ingenuity in the build of scares using the technical aspects of filmmaking both serviced and were serviced by the focus on narrative and character.

The first act of The Outwaters takes a familiar approach. We get to see four people, as they prepare to head to the desert for a low budget music video shoot. It's clear the person with the camera is going to be the video director, and makes a regular habit of walking around with a camera running. This is going to explain the how and why there is any footage to be found, essentially the answer to "Why are they still filming?" This guy is filming constantly.

On paper, this sounds similar to the way The Blair Witch Project begins. The difference being none of the these characters are particularly defined, as characters. By the time they set out for the desert, we don't really have much of a grasp on who any of them are. We know what their roles are supposed to be in the video shoot, but they all feel like character sketches. Even Michelle, the singer whose video they're shooting and who probably has the strongest characterization, feels like a stereotype more than a person. "One of those neo-hippy, bohemian chicks." As a kind of item on a checklist (intro characters in first act, check), it makes sense, but it also misses what about that particular item works in The Blair Witch. By the time the crew sets off toward Burkittsville, we have a sense of who Heather is, what her personality is like, beyond just being the director of the documentary. We've gotten some idea of who Josh and Mike are as well.

This is essentially the achilles heel of The Outwaters as a whole, and it evident in the first act. It becomes even more clear in the second act, especially when compared to The Blair Witch. Again, I don't normally feel comfortable making direct comparisons between two films, especially one that is a cultural touchstone, but The Outwaters is so consciously and openly flaunting that influence, it more fervently calls attention to its shortcomings.

What constitutes the second act of The Outwaters is following these characters as they wander around in the desert. Late in this second act, we get a night seen in a tent, that's very reminiscent of The Blair Witch in the way it uses sound design to create it's atmosphere and tension. It works. It's creepy. It's also wasted, as we again go back to sun drenched desert wandering and the events of the night before don't seem to have left much of an impression on the characters. There's no sense of tension or urgency to what they have to say, and there's been no change in their behavior. It ends up wasting what is a technically well crafted scene. The closest thing we get to something like characterization is that there's a possible feeling Robbie, the director (played by Banfitch, the writer/director of The Outwaters) has some kind of crush or romantic interest in the musician he's volunteered to make this video with, possibly? It's possible, but it's also just as likely they are platonic friends, for whom making this music video is a convergence of interests/ambitions and they're both happy and grateful to be doing that with someone they trust.

The Blair Witch follows something closer to a four act structure than The Outwaters three act structure, specifically because of how much time is dedicated to character and narrative. Where the music video crew in The Outwaters head out into the desert directly after we get our introductions, The Blair Witch front loads it's mythology in the second act. It begins with people recounting the local lore, and Heather reciting passages from a piece of her research. We're basically being told exactly what to be be afraid of, The Blair Witch, haunting the woods of Burkittsville, where we know our protagonists are eventually going. We're also getting pieces of characterization in their interactions with each other, and the people they are interviewing.

We get more characterization before they even head into the woods. The night after they've gotten interviews outlining local lore, we see them together, celebrating their day. We get an idea of what their dynamic is shaping up to be. We get a good look at how they treat each other and what they expect of each other, under normal circumstances. We get very little interaction between all four characters in The Outwaters, before they head out into the desert, and even once they've arrived and are wandering around, it's so disjointed, we aren't getting any sense of who they are or what their dynamic is. Rob's brother doesn't seem to have any reason to exist on this trip or in this film, at all. There's a sense that the relationship isn't very close, that there are things preventing it from being as close as Rob would like, but it's really not explored at all. As much as there is a certain level of reality in the idea that someone shooting a music video might bring their brother along for the trip, as an opportunity to bond, he ends up seeming like some extraneous character who has nothing to do and no real reason to exist in the narrative.

The third act of The Blair Witch Project continues adding to the mythology, telling us what is out there, begins to suggest our characters are in jeopardy, and then shows us how that effects them. We get the mythology related to Coffin Rock. We get the introduction of the stick figures. We get the introduction of the stone cairns. We get to see how our characters react to being lost. We get the escalating sense of threat at night. There is no analogue to this sequence of events in The Outwaters. Maybe, for those who feel The Blair Witch is just "people wandering around in the woods, arguing while nothing happens," The Outwaters is a better alternative. For my money, way The Blair Witch layers and alternates different types of tension is central to what makes it a film that succeeds where so many others fail. The first night they stay in the woods, Josh says he heard noises around their tents. Not a big deal, right? If you're in the woods at night, and not used to it, you're going to hear things that sound strange. Cackling though? That's not what you should be hearing in the wilderness overnight. Because of the mythology we've been hearing for the first two and a half acts, as an audience, we are primed to begin to associate it with the mythology of the witch. It's a small thing, but the tension mounts through the rest of the film to the crescendo that is the final act. The power of the films final image is derived by how well everything before it sets it up as both inevitable, and tragic.

As the events of Blair Witch Project become more threatening each night, the tension eats into their interactions during the day, culminating with Mike's admission that he kicked the map into the creek. The beauty of it is that we go back and forth between the different forms of tension, the genuinely frightening things happening at night while they're in the tents, trade for the different varieties of tension in the growing sense of hopelessness of being lost and the personal interactions devolving. The personal interactions are devolving because of both of those other forms of tension. In a way, alternating between them gives a break from each, but once it begins, the overall tension never stops, it only continues to compound on itself.

The Outwaters jumps directly into attempting to build and create tension and scares through the atmosphere created by the cinematography and sound design, the technical aspects. There are some very cool ideas in all of it. Some of it is interesting and compelling in a visual sense. There are few interesting nods to the mythology of a particular sub genre of horror, but because there's no sense, narratively, of what's happening or what the threat is, much less any sense of connection to the characters, and because Banfitch seems to have mistaken the ambiguous qualities in The Blair Witch for being the most important aspects of what made it scary, once The Outwaters does start to give us an idea of what we've been seeing, it feels like a cop out because of how much we've already endured. It's hard to care about the small revelations we get, when we're already just exhausted, and basically bored by the recurring visual motifs without anything to connect them to in the character or story.

I use endured for a specific reason. Theres is a portion of the third act of The Outwaters which involves following a flashlight's narrow beam, and it goes on for so long it becomes maddeningly tedious. As opposed to having some feeling of identification or empathy with the character, it comes across as if Banfitch was taunting us as the audience. I don't think it's purposeful, but it feels as if his perspective was, "You want to see more? You want to know more? Hahahaha! Fuck off! What you get is more of this flashlight!"

There are some interesting ideas in all of this. There's an interesting premise in working this found footage conceit into a sub genre we haven't really seen it used for. Some of the visual ideas are very cool. It's also visually incoherent for such long stretches that it becomes tedious and worse, boring at points. I respect a lot of what Banfitch seems to be going for, and the imagination that sees the connections in a lot of the things he's playing with. The execution doesn't work. The Outwaters ends up being a good example of the reality that despite what a lot of the horror crowd who dislike first person POV films say, and what no small number of micro and small budget producers think, it may be cheaper, but it's not easier to craft a film using the found footage or first person narrative conceit. It may skirt some of the problems of more traditional third person/godlike narrative perspective, but it also introduces other problems that aren't a given in traditional narrative perspective. It's not unlie the differences between writing a story or novel in first person versus third person. It doesn't make it any easier to do it well, it just gives you different problems to overcome in order to do it well.

The Outwaters isn't for me. I can't help but think some of the good word of mouth is the result of people having seen it in festival screenings, with an audience full of people who can't wait to see the next great little indie that could. I have no doubt that adds something to the experience, and that in a theater full of people reacting to it, some of the more tedious sections would be less tedious. I doubt this one is going to have legs though. Deadstream had good word of mouth coming out of festivals, and is an entertaining film overall. Like The Outwaters and The Blair Witch Project, it's the result of filmmakers taking the bare minimum in resources and trying to produce the best film they can. It's also just well made, all around. It has a solid narrative. A central character that is engaging, and he isn't the most likable character, we want to see what's going to happen next, even if it's just to see this idiot "find out" exactly why he should have stopped "fucking around" before the movie even began. It's going to have legs. People will be referring back to it five years from now. I'm fairly certain that once The Outwaters wears through this short spurt of good will generated on the festival circuit, it's going to be shelved as something that's only being seen when someone decides they need to see all of the found footage or first person POV horror they can. This one won't be getting recommended in to the next generation of horror fans in the way the better films which fit that description have become part of the canon of great horror.

At the same time, because I do see some strong ideas and some examples of a strong visual imagination in The Outwaters, I'll check out what Robbie Banfitch does next. A micro-budget film like this is a good way for a first time feature director to learn what their strengths and weaknesses are as a director and storyteller, and if Banfitch takes some lessons away from this one, he could produce something I'd be genuinely excited by.