Of all the horror genre films one of the hardest to get right is the monster film. Some of the most memorable monsters are burdened with a bad story which kills the film. The latest to be somewhat related to this genre is Outcast. It’s not so much of a monster film, but has a lot of the same attributes leading down that path.
Outcast follows a mother and son living on the run. They are being hunted by a dangerous man using dark magic to track them down and kill them. She uses the same magic to protect her son, but when he falls in love with his beautiful neighbor and the locals are being murdered by an unknown creature, it becomes unclear who is the true evil. Outcast is far from an actual monster movie, but has all the makings of one. The story is nothing all that original, but works on some levels. It runs a bit slow for most of the film. There is a clever deep story here if you can find it. Sadly at times it is clouded with some aspects that seemed forced and cluttered. For most of the movie it feels like a love story between two young people, which works, but then after a while you forget the type of film you are watching. So when something finally does happen it takes a bit to get back into the horror genre. The creature itself in this film is executed perfectly. They don’t just throw it in your face, but build the suspense until the final reveal and it’s worth it. The look and action of this creature was great and creepy on all levels.
This movie works on several levels, just takes some time to figure out what it wants to be. This is a well-crafted film in the bigger scheme of things, just creeps along for the first half of the film. If you stick with it, the ending has a decent payoff and worth the movie as a whole.
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