Finally being at a point where I can tackle some ideas I’ve had ruminating is a very lovely headspace to be in. While 2022 was an excellent year for horror movies in volume and in solid quality, one thing I’ve learned very quickly this year is that 2023 might be the year of divisive horror. Skinamarink burst onto the scene and quickly had folks taking sides, and then The Outwaters came down the pipe about a week later. So, take a look at the trailers and then I’ll dive into it.
Written & Directed by: Kyle Edward Ball
Stars: Lucas Paul, Dali Rose Tetreault, Ross Paul, Jaime Hill
Written & Directed by: Robbie Banfitch
Stars: Robbie Banfitch, Scott Schamell, Michelle May, Angela Basolis
Both of these movies had significant hype (at least within some movie circles I am part of) before they were on my radar. The horror community was buzzing long before Skinamarink got a juicy national release or The Outwaters signed their exclusive digital distribution deal with Scream Box. However, as much as they worked for some, that is far from the consensus.
Robbie Banfitch’s modern found footage film, The Outwaters, has an IMDB score of 4.4 (out of 10), a Letterboxd 2.6 stars (out of 5), and a Rotten Tomatoes audience score of 51%. Kyle Edward Ball’s haunted house creeper Skinamarink has an IMDB score of 5.1, an RT audience score of 44%, and a Letterboxd star rating sitting at an even 3. Usually, that’s a pretty big condemnation but both films boast positive Metacritic scores: 74 and 66 respectively. More often than not, the situation is reversed with the fans loving something that critics despise. I could speculate on why there’s a disconnect, but that’s a different discussion for a different time and perhaps one of many podcasts.
Anyway, I was fortunate to see both in theaters and even got to go to a Q&A with Banfitch and some of the cast from The Outwaters. I also had a chance to go to a similar event for Skinamarink and I regret not making that happen. Part of the consideration with that latter decision was that even though I liked the movie, I wasn’t convinced that I wanted to sit through it again in order to get to the Q&A portion but that has more to do with me than it is a condemnation of the film.
What Kyle Edward Ball did with Skinamarink is really incredible, no matter how you slice it. On a budget of what I have seen listed at $15-thousand, the movie made over $2-million. That’s a massive win for a small indie horror movie, no matter who did and didn’t like it. And for the record, I did like it but I also found myself in the middle of an ideological standoff between both ends of the spectrum.
The film executes its style with a melodic and disarming lack of precision in its presentation that captures the paranoia of being home alone and afraid of the dark as a child. In this case, there is a very good reason to be afraid. Of course, the visual storytelling style is very much intentional and used to essentially keep the viewer at bay. However, that seems to be one of the sticking points along with the pacing.
At 1h 40m, it’s certainly too long to keep showing me the ceiling, but I am also not in the camp saying that it should have been 10 minutes. Part of its mystique is delayed gratification, but it’s also a horror film and an ominous sense of dread that never really pulls the trigger is a tough way to reward the audience for their patience. There are a couple of moments that tease you harder than others and maybe one real alarming scare in the film but this wasn’t something that haunted me in the way it did others.
I have also heard this referred to as found footage or a “found footage style” film. If you look at it that way then I could see it being even more disappointing, but also inaccurate. Sure, some similar techniques are used, and the camera is grainy and oddly positioned but narratively speaking there’s a significant distinction and The Outwaters is a great point of comparison to demonstrate what that means.
Found footage is essentially a reliable silent narrator. It’s just there to observe and document what the characters are experiencing. Of course, the camera work is intentional (in varying degrees) and we saw some more creatively artistic shots but it’s designed to seem unintentional. A voyeuristic video diary, in a sense, that lets the audience and the characters on screen know that there is this 3rd eye watching them. The people on screen are aware of the camera and that knowledge affects how they interact with the audience and how the audience interacts with the narrative that is unfolding.
That is certainly not the case with Jamie McRae’s cinematography in Skinamarink as he uses the camera in a combination of off-center stationary shots and selective first-person in order to guide the viewer’s gaze with the very specific intent to either hide or show us something. Wondering what we aren’t seeing and anticipating what we may end up witnessing is what drives the energy…the spirit…of the film. It’s a clever tactic that recognizes its budgetary limitations and twists the conventional framing to suit its needs. However, that’s a very different approach to storytelling than what Banfitch does very well with The Outwaters, especially the diary aspect early on.
His film has a lot more character foundation work than I have seen in the vast majority of other FF horror films. By taking a more traditional found footage approach, we get to see a lot of who these characters are before we get to the point where anything happens to them. It’s just a group of friends playing with their recording equipment and there were times when I was wondering when and if it was actually going to turn into a horror movie at all. Once it turns that corner, there is no coming back but I hadn’t seen any trailers before sitting down at the screening so I didn’t have any idea of what might be in store. From my perspective, the diary-style component of the FF approach gave The Outwaters a layer I didn’t expect and made the gore and practical effects more impactful.
As is the case with many FF films, the cinematography gets hectic and intentionally so. In this instance, it’s always a little frantic because of the characters who are in charge of the camera but it works to highlight what Banfitch wants. It is very effective in some instances but that style does tend to run into trouble once the shit hits the fan because, as is the case with many other FF horror films, far too high a percentage of the screen time winds up being a chaotic blur. That can be really offputting, especially if you are prone to motion sickness, and doesn’t always justify its screen time (it was one of the biggest issues I had with the 2016 Blair Witch because it felt like 50% of the movie was just a camera getting slapped by tree branches in the dark). Obviously, the camera has to be along for the ride or the movie wouldn’t exist but the audience shouldn’t be questioning why the characters are still recording given the circumstances. Suspension of disbelief is key, no matter how you try to tell a horror story.
I run an international film club and one of the members expressed his distaste for one of 2022’s horror films that most people I know really liked and I did too. That reason was that nobody died until past the halfway point of the film. Seeing that pointed out in a film from last year got me thinking about the narrative DNA that binds Skinamarink and The Outwaters and the trends we may see in horror moving forward. Both have moments where they are effective at communicating their intent and times where it’s far more indirect, but they are most linked by their commitment to delayed gratification.
I often joke with my partner about how my desire for instant gratification always backfires. While it’s an inside joke with us, there is substance to the value of delaying that reward. It’s an important act of willpower and self-control to not take what we want at the moment in order to achieve a better reward down the line. It is an important life skill to develop because you don’t always get what you want in life, but like the song says “…you just might find, you get what you need”. While that may be important for life, it remains to be seen if that translates into horror filmmaking.
Although I haven’t seen it, Scream VI was released recently and as I understand it there’s a pretty impactful opening. The people I have talked to have responded well to that and that makes me think about those audience scores I pointed out earlier. That would suggest people aren’t going to movie theaters to wait to be scared. I am not here to say that one style of horror is better than the other, or one is scarier, but it’s interesting to see how fans have responded to horror storytelling over the last year or so and what that means for the future of the genre.
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