Horror Movie Review: The Dead Outside (2008)

The country has been wiped out by a plague of some sort. A cure meant to combat it just made the whole situation worse mutating to turn the folks who remain (the dying) paranoid & violent. Daniel is on the run from the plague & finds his way to an abandoned farmhouse. Once holed up for the night he is confronted by the strange & mysterious April who has also been staying at the farmhouse.

Survival is the name of the game & they make a valiant attempt at it even if something is clearly not right with April & Daniel is battling personal demons. Everything is going ok until another survivor finds her way to the farmhouse.

Before watching this movie I think it is important to remind you of how little this movie was made for just £4000 & shot in 2 weeks. It embodies low budget & it is evident at times but not as much as you might think. I actually think the movie looks quiet good helped by an excellently bleak location (set in Scotland). The real problems occur when we switch to night filming & I found I could barely see anything. I find this really annoying….

I’m going to try & come up with some positives for this movie even if it is difficult. I found it very boring & a chore to finish. It seems as if the director knew there was only about 40 minutes worth of movie here so every scene feels dragged out & protracted. Scenes where April is not quite right & Daniel asks her again & again if she is ok seem to make up a third of the movie.

The actors themselves do a decent enough job of what script they have. April is a convincing enough character & I bought into the belief that she had some dark secret. The character Daniel not so much, I mean it was clear he had something on his mind but I didn’t really care. Flashbacks in relation what happened to Daniel previously is told in flashbacks that come randomly. No sense & it completely threw me off several times.

His revelation did though strike a chord with me & it raised the question about what I would do. April’s not so much… in fact I thought hers was down-right stupid & unnecessary compared with what could have been done.

The ‘infected’ are somewhat chilling as they have elements of human behaviour still left in them even if they are few (low budget) & even if they remind me of the ‘rage’ victims from 28 Days/Months Later.

The most disappointing part of the movie is ending which borders on being boring & bloated. I think it was supposed to be tense but I found it so hard to see in the dark that any concern for the survivors was lost. I just couldn’t tell who was who clearly enough…

It’s ok, nothing more. Not a long movie but it feels 3 hours long as it is pretty boring. The characters that could have been much more interesting & an ending that left a bad taste.