THE OUTWATERS: The Desert is Lovely, Dark & Deep. A Reflection by Robert Aaron Mitchell

 

The Outwaters. Photo Courtesy of Cinedigm

Writer and director Robbie Banfitch has said with The Outwaters, "... if I’ve done my job well, it should raise hairs and evoke chills, even from die-hard horror fans. I aimed for a naturalistic, slow-burn experience that will take its audience to a place they've never been, and then beyond. I aimed for something lovely, dark and deep."

People go out to the desert for a myriad of reasons. To find themselves, to lose themselves, to connect, to disconnect. The four friends in The Outwaters are going out to create a music video for Michelle (Michelle August) as a way of helping elevate her music and connect with her mom who has passed away. The video will be shot by Robbie (Robbie Banfitch) who is accompanied by his brother Scott (Scott Schamell) also joining them is Angela (Angela Basolis). These four actors have pulled off something that can be difficult to do in the genre world of micro budget filmmaking. Creating a group of characters that an audience can enjoy spending time with. They are excited to head out on an adventure into the Mojave Desert. As Angela - who has never been out to the desert - remarks, "The desert seems beautiful and magical" 

Michelle May in The Outwaters. Photo Courtesy of Cinedigm

 

Along with the excitement there is a sense of loss. Michelle has lost her mother and it is remarked a couple of times how much she looks like her mom. Michelle's music is rooted in her mom singing to her. The Zagorac brothers have lost their father. Robbie gifts Scott a backpack, a journal for Scott's short stories as well as their dad's bandana.  

There are also vibrations are all around. Literally. An Earthquake rattles the apartment the friends are hanging out in as they prepare to head to the Mojave Desert. Several aftershocks rattle the place and the nerves. Innocuous events take on ominous qualities. Someone blows out a birthday cake laden with candles. The candles flicker and get extinguished. Little red embers remain. The embers resemble little red eyes. The red lights are swallowed up by the dark. A chandelier is filmed as a hand moves the dangling crystal accents. The light catches them and flickers in dazzling and hypnotic ways. Once out into the desert there are loud, inexplicable sounds. The vibe moves from fun, easy-going to strange and weird to....

Cinema for me is largely an emotional endeavor. However a film elicits it's intended response doesn't matter as long as it gets there. Comedy is of course is looking for laughs; a romantic film looks for the wonder and magic of meeting someone and perhaps the sadness of losing that someone. Filmmakers crafting a horror film are trying to make one uneasy and uncomfortable, make the viewer squirm in their seat, make the hairs standup on your arm. Perhaps cup their hand over their eyes and look at the film through the slight spaces one opens between your fingers. Make one audible exclaim, "what the fuck?!?!?!?!" and just down right scream. The Outwaters achieved it's goals. The hairs were standing up on my arms, as I cupped a hand over my eyes and screamed, "what the fuck!?!?!?!?!" I have watched some of the most hardcore, transgressive, dangerous cinema ever crafted. Kudos to the entire team of The Outwaters for setting out to make a scary movie and achieving their goal. 

Michelle May in The Outwaters. Photo Courtesy of Cinedigm

 

 

The Outwaters is a found footage film and one is either going to be on board with that or not. The impetus of the characters making the trek to the desert for a music video eliminates the shaky cam often found in this genre. Having Robbie looking for cool shots lends itself to a wonderful visual flair. There is a great shot of Michelle's sunglasses reflecting the sky. "Your eyes are the sky" The structure of the film is ingenious. The footage is on three memory cards that is now evidence of the Mojave Police. If you are going to take away or severely limit one of your audiences components to engage with your movie, in the case of The Outwaters, visually, with the use of a flashlight as the only way to see what is happening at night or complete darkness as the visual, then the other cinematic tools better be amped up. Indeed they are, the sound design of the film is incredible. I shall mention the entire credited team here. Robbie Banfitch, sound design. Monkeyland Audio, Trip Brock, Itai Levy and additional sound effects by Matt Shivers (an apt last name), Melody Elwell Romancito and Pete Barry. As in any micro-budget, independent film many hats have to be worn by a few amount of people. Robbie Banfitch also handles the special effects. This is no easy feat. Creating effects that are believable and effective is a difficult task. He pulls of the effects with great affect. Another great aspect of crafting a found footage film is really leaning into it and breaking the forth wall. As much as we the audiences are recoiling in terror we are drawn into what is happening in front of us because the characters are making eye contact with us. They are crying out for help. We, the audience sit in the dark unable to aid those in distress, creating another layer of fear and anguish upon the audience.

 

Robbie Banfitch in The Outwaters. Photo Courtesy of Cinedigm.

It is a privilege to be able to see a film prior to it being completely unleashed to the world and write about is trying to thread a needle. You are writing about a film in sweeping, vague notions, trying to convey your experience without giving away too much, if anything away. I'll say this, my experience watching The Outwaters was a hypnotic, hallucinatory, disorienting, blood soaked, terrifying, mesmerizing, chilling and shocking.

The Outwaters is a truly a triumph of micro-budget cinematic storytelling. A film like this is truly willed into existence. The desert is indeed lovely, dark and deep. 

TIFF 2022 V/H/S/99 A Reflection by Robert Aaron Mitchell

V/H/S/99 a reflection by Robert Aaron Mitchell

The year 1999 has been on my mind a lot recently. I watched Woodstock 99: Peace, Love and Rage and began thinking of the year that was. Culturally turbulent. I remember quite distinctly the buildup, panic and fear surrounding Y2K. The paranoia was very real that computers would not recognize the year 2000 and thereby crash the entire system. Banks where running out of cash. Grocery stores were running out food.

1999 was actually pretty chaotic beyond the millennium scare. It was a year that saw riots at the WTO Seattle of what became known as the battle for Seattle. On June 1st Napster was launched completely changing how we consume culture and entertainment. The Columbine school shooting tragedy occurred. As previously mentioned, Woodstock 99 concert took place. A corporate music festival billed as an anti-commercial love fest which turned into a nightmare, as riots, fires and numerous sexual assaults happened. If you were a teenager in 1999 it was also a time of restless energy, pranks, skateboarding and nights wandering around Blockbuster looking for a videotape to rent.

This bring me to V/H/S/99. Alongside the sequel, the found footage concept is another staple of the horror genre, the anthology film. Creepshow (1980) Southbound (2015) XX (2017) Trilogy of Terror (1975), The ABCs of Death. The V/H/S movies combine found footage as well as the anthology structure. V/H/S/99 premiered at the 2022 Midnight Madness program. The fifth film in the series. I have always had a fondness for VHS tapes and camcorders. I spent the 1990s making ninja fight scenes with my friends. Graduating to more complex gangster and art house movies shot around my hometown. There was indeed a thrill to put in a blank tape with nothing written on the label to see what was on the videotape.

A staple to the structure of the anthology film is the wraparound story. In the case of V/H/S/99 it is less a story than something that begins the VHS tape and is then buried under many other recordings and resurfaces in the midst of tracking lines and static. It is highly imaginative and funny as hell. Little green army men in a stop motion movie with great voice overs. These army men segments are the work of Tyler MacIntyre who also directed a longer segment in the film. Which reminds me in the backyard of a townhouse in Mississauga, Ontario near the Meadowvale Mall are several G.I. Joes I buried alive that never made it back to the base. I have been meaning for quite sometime to return to that townhouse on a mission of archeological importance.

The tape goes through infomercials, BMX stunts, more static, "The Video Journal of Neurosurgery"...and settles into something quite akin to my 1999 experience, videotaping skateboarding at the local skate park and a garage band. This segment is Shredding written and directed by Maggie Levin. Way before YouTube and TikTok the original "content creators" were 90s kids running around with LP videotapes as is the case with this group of friends in a band. Local legend has it that a band called Bitch Cat played a show to very catastrophic results. The kids are going to the place where the show happened to see what they can find. Perhaps some new gear for their band and most definitely some more stuff for them to shoot on their camcorder. The fun of this segment is watching and vibing the transition of kids mugging for the camera, juvenile hi-jinks to suspense and horror in a very quick amount of time.

The unique pressures of conformity when heading to university. It leads some to take on great risks so that the next four years of their life are filled with friends, parties and maybe find a boyfriend or girlfriend. The tape settles on what is Suicide Bid written and directed by Johannes Roberts. Lily has found a sorority that she has fallen in love with and wishes to pledge to. She is so taken with the sorority and afraid of spending her university days alone that she decides to pledge only to them which means that if she doesn't get in, that's it, no sorority, social suicide aka the suicide bid. She meets up with girls form the sorority in a graveyard where she will be placed in a coffin and buried alive. There are safe guards in place. The lengths someone will go to become popular are indeed downright scary.

Ah, the Nickelodeon kids game shows of the 1990s. Competition is fierce and broadcast across the nation. You could lose and be humiliated  on national television It could very well be a nightmare scenario. Losing far more than the competition is where Ozzy's Dungeon directed by Flying Lotus and written by Zoe Cooper and Flying Lotus takes us. The lengths that a Mom will go to right the wrongs for their children is at the heart of this segment. It is also a segment that asks the question, "What would you do for a Sega Dreamcast?"

Another great aspect of the 1990s was the prank. It could be done in person, at a sleepover. For my friends and I, our favorite was the prank was the telephone call. Today's kids will never know the simple pleasure of being complete dickheads and phoning complete strangers in the middle of the night. 

It turns out the little green army men were being filmed by Brady the little brother of Dylan the protagonist of The Gawkers written by Chris Lee Hill and Tyler MacIntyre. Directed by Tyler MacIntyre. The big brother promptly snatches the camcorder back from Brady and begins filming himself flexing in the mirror and prank after prank with his buddies. The extremely hormonal teenagers then focus their camcorder lens on Sandra the girl next door. Turns out that Brady while being a genius stop-motion storyteller also has mad computer skills. Once again we see someone sellout morals for the sake of acceptance. 

The tape of V/H/S/99 winds up in a logical place, New Years Eve 1999. All those fears of the Y2K bug and the new millennium take a back seat in Joseph and Vanessa Winters' To Hell and Back. A group of documentary filmmakers are shooting a documentary with a bunch of people anticipating what the last night of 1999 will bring. "You're in for one hell of a trip" one of the people say to the camera. We can all hope to run into Mabel if our journeys do not take us exactly where we thought we might go. Great creature effects and humor close out the anthology on high note.

The fun of V/H/S/99 are the stories within stories that propel the characters forward in their segments. A doomed band, a tale of a sorority pledge gone horribly array, a horrific appearance on a kids game show. Another completely engrossing and entertaining aspect of the film is being propelled by the imaginations of the storytellers as they take their segments to places you had no idea where they were going to wind up. Watching the filmmakers play within the context of VHS camcorder is also one of the great aspects of the V/H/S anthology films. The end credits arrive with Danzig's "Long Way Back from Hell" blasting. Pitch perfect. 1999 what a fucking year. Don't be a dweeb, rewind the tape for the next person who finds this tape.