‘Outside’ REVIEW: Shambling Without a Pulse
‘Outside’ REVIEW: Shambling Without a Pulse
From left to right: Lucas (Aiden Patdu), Iris (Beauty Gonzales), Francis (Sid Lucero), and Josh (Marco Masa) | Still from Netflix
The undead genre has already been bludgeoned to death by Hollywood executives. Once a subset of horror that struck fear and disgust into audiences, its tropes have now become so recognizable and familiar that there's no room left for surprises. To these industry bigwigs and those who only consume Western media, parroting the usual cynical sentiments about horror cinema, it’s dead and buried. Well, that may be true — but only on the Hollywood side of things.
The situation in the East paints a different picture. Recent outings of mindless flesh-eaters in East Asia, such as the series Kingdom and All of Us Are Dead, movies such as Yeon Sang-ho’s Train to Busan, and Rob Jabbaz’s The Sadness, have captivated audiences around the world and introduced a uniquely Asian flavor to these stories. In the Philippines, however, while there are mildly entertaining entries of varying quality, such as Mikhail Red’s Block Z, Joey de Guzman’s Day Zero, and his bloody Shake, Rattle and Roll segment Rage, the genre has yet to gain a real foothold in our cinematic landscape.
As much as I want the masterful and gut-wrenchingly tragic indie Visayan horror feature Di Ingon ‘Nato to be the movie that everyone thinks of when discussing the best Filipino zombie horror film of all time, the institutionalized distribution, Western hegemony in cinema encouraged by shopping malls, and the commodification of art by business executives make it almost impossible for the film to be recognized outside of small cinephile circles.
Zombie films — especially good ones — are almost non-existent in the Philippines, as we haven’t truly claimed the genre as our own or imprinted our own identity onto it. This is why it’s baffling to me that anyone would feel the need to carve a “fresh take” out of it when we’ve barely even mastered its basics. Yet Carlo Ledesma’s Outside, marketed as Netflix Philippines’ first local zombie film, is certainly ready to make that attempt.
The film drops you right in the middle of an undead apocalypse as seen through the eyes of the Abel family, consisting of the patriarch Francis (Sid Lucero), the matriarch Iris (Beauty Gonzales), the eldest son Josh (Marco Masa), and the youngest, Lucas (Aiden Patdu). Together, they seek refuge from the living dead in Francis’s ancestral childhood home, where they are forced to contend with cabin fever and the painful secrets of the past that threaten to rock their relationships with each other.
Iris comforts Lucas | Still from Netflix
Technically, Outside is still a zombie film, as its backdrop is set in a world where the reanimated dead wander aimlessly in search of flesh. However, its story beats pivots more closely to a slow-burn psychological horror feature that examines generational trauma and how it passes like a virus from one generation to the next. It’s very clear that the film aims to set itself apart from the typical zombie horror narrative and attempt to mine something deeper, modeling itself after “elevated” horror films where the real monster lies within oneself.
But in the process of "elevating" the genre, the film shoots itself in the foot. It becomes so absorbed in the psychological introspection of Francis and his family that it forgets the dead are literally roaming the earth. In Catholic scripture, that would signify Judgment Day and the end of the world, but apparently, that’s not a big deal to this pray-before-dinner family, as scene after scene shows them loitering outside the house as if they’re not in danger of being mauled to death. By continually ignoring the ever-present threat of flesh-eating ghouls, the film robs itself of any potential tension from the apocalyptic angle.
This begs the question: why are the undead even present when they are such a non-factor in the events that are unfolding? We eventually get an explanation for why the walking dead don’t appear as often, but the characters only learn this near the final act. There’s also an attempt to establish their threat through an action sequence where the Abel family is attacked while trying to cross a bridge, which apparently was an integral part of the filmmaking process that took three separate days to film.
The film is technically sound and better made than some of the mainstream local films released this year, but there’s a certain polish to it that makes the mise-en-scène too obvious and artificial. Despite the effort, the sequence feels unnaturally stilted, as if the actors are waiting for cues or searching for their marks, draining the scene of any real urgency. This leaves the horrors of the undead to fade into the background instead of becoming a convincing driving force, making it difficult to feel any real stakes or pressure for survival.
Zombies on the prowl | Still from Netflix
Annoyingly, the film is generating way more online discussion than it should. The general rhetoric from those who love it seems to be that those who don't like it are simply failing to grasp its true nature as a psychological thriller that makes way for some family drama; it just so happens to be set during a zombie apocalypse, and the reanimated flesh-eating corpses don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. Yes, the genre has always served as a lens through which we explore human nature and how humanity reacts in the face of societal breakdown brought on by the walking dead. At its center are the humans and their very human problems.
In George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, Romero subversively critiques race relations in 1960s America by featuring an African-American protagonist who, after surviving a hellish night of ghoul attacks, is unceremoniously gunned down by bloodthirsty rednecks. In 28 Days Later, we follow a group of people orphaned by a rage-filled apocalypse as they find a family among strangers and fight to protect it when it’s threatened.
In Return of the Living Dead and Di Ingon ‘Nato, we witness entire communities being built up only to be ripped apart (literally) before our eyes. But all of these noteworthy films within the genre retain the undead element and use it to amplify emotional stakes and drama, unlike Outside, which seems allergic to the vital balance between horror and human drama, diluting the very essence of what makes a story set in a zombie apocalypse compelling.
When all of that is stripped away, what we’re left with is an arid melodrama we’ve seen countless times before about a family coming apart and a tensionless psychological horror thriller designed like those A24 and NEON trauma-centered films that always end either on an ambiguous or cynical note, featuring a patriarch who terrorizes his family and projects his own problems onto them. So, it’s more of the same, really, but a different kind of same that leaves it open to comparisons with cinema titans such as Mike de Leon’s Kisapmata or Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Shockingly, the only difference with Outside is that it gives its abuser a half-baked redemption arc. Yikes.
But at least the actors did their best to do it justice. Lucero carries the film and is fantastic, clearly passionate about bringing Ledesma’s vision to life, even if it all comes off as more pathetic than unnerving since his Francis is written as too much of a bondying haciendero who lacks the menace needed to instill fear without a weapon in hand, which ultimately drains the film of any real sense of peril.
Beauty Gonzales makes a notable attempt as well, and I would say she gives levity to the dreary material. However, having already played similar roles in Kampon and In My Mother’s Skin, I can’t help but fear that her talent is being typecast into the role of the mother in horror films — silent and submissive, with little say in her husband’s desires. As for the younger actors' performances, they lack some naturalness to really make a connection with the audience, but they’re still young; they’ll improve.
Sid Lucero as Francis | Still from Netflix
Outside tries to carve out its own path, but in doing so, it loses touch with what makes the zombie category resonate in the first place — primal survival and raw human emotions in collision with a world of viscera and chaos. While I applaud its audacity for trying to do something different, it all comes at the cost of forgetting the basics that made the horror of its predecessors iconic and unforgettable, devolving into a film that’s all gloss with no appetite for genuine emotional impact. It’s a walking corpse; shambling without a pulse.
As we continue to seek out our identity in this specific cinematic landscape, we can only hope that the next attempt will rise to the occasion and finally deliver the kind of unforgettable zombie film that resonates — one that, like the living dead, refuses to stay buried and won’t fade into the endless wave of content that Netflix has to offer. But then again, you could just watch Di Ingon ‘Nato for free on iWantTFC, and that’ll all be taken care of.
‘Outside’ is now playing on Netflix.
