If the job of a horror film is to terrify, then The Outwaters is refreshingly direct and astonishingly successful even as it is, in certain ways, wilfully obscure.

| Jul 8, 2024

The Outwaters sounds Blair Witch–like on paper, down to the camping trip its group of four friends is taking. But the actual experience of watching it is an astonishing array of dreamlike imagery as the trip goes from mundane to macabre.

| Dec 9, 2023

Lacing the scramble too with a cosmic hint of Stanley Kubrick, director and star Robbie Banfitch touches on something truly nightmarish.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 6, 2023

While its craft is certainly interesting, there’s something decadent and empty at its heart.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 4, 2023

Some may find all this tedious or confusing, but there’s an admirable integrity to Banfitch’s approach. “The Outwaters” genuinely feels like a first-person perspective on the end of the world.

| Feb 24, 2023

A cannier, and more effective, slice of shaky-cam insanity than most of its brethren, right down to a finale that’s akin to "2001: A Space Odyssey" as processed through a meat grinder.

| Feb 15, 2023

If it seems like I'm talking around what actually happens in The Outwaters, it's only partially for fear of spoilers: some of Banfitch's images are so potent (and horrifying) that they'd probably hit just as hard even if you saw them coming.

| Feb 10, 2023

The Outwaters, Robbie Banfitch’s compellingly creepy new horror flick, takes the found-footage genre and the lost-in-the-desert nightmare, smashes them together, and spins them off their axis.

| Feb 9, 2023

It becomes a mood more than a narrative.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Feb 9, 2023

A film designed to pummel you with confusing terror, and it has some incredibly effective passages.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 9, 2023

“The Outwaters” conjures a swoony, dreamlike atmosphere that heightens the shocks to come.

| Feb 9, 2023

With The Outwaters, the found-footage horror film has unexpectedly found its trippy, unmooring, ultraviolent answer to the cosmic horror of H.P. Lovecraft and the free-associative barbarity of A Page of Madness.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 3, 2023

Banfitch mercilessly lulls viewers with a soothing intro before ripping open a dark abyss beneath them, flinging them into an immersive pit of visceral madness.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 1, 2022