Macabre…ish Horror Review: Outside

 

Outside, 2024/ 2 hrs 22 min

 

A man, Francis (Sid Lucero), returns to his parents home during the zombie out break and find the fences down and the house, open to the elements. And his parents are still there, dad is dead, he was turning and clearly committed suicide, as he was changing. Francis finds his fly blown corpse, still in bed and still holding his gun.

 

Outside of the bedroom, Mom stands in the hall, saying “Sorry.” over and over. She’s completely changed and as she reaches out to her son, her torso falls off of her hips, trailing entrails behind her, with her legs falling after. She screams sorry while rapidly crawling toward him. He falls then pulls the trigger.

 

After burying his parents, Francis and his wife, Iris (Beauty Gonzalez), and two kids, Joshua (Marco Masa) and Lucas (Aidan Tyler Patdu), have a look around. In the barn, they find another man hanging from the rafters. The corpus falls onto Josh as he retrieves a ring of keys. Inside, Iris finds a genny, in a strange area where a child was clearly kept. The wall is decorated with drawings over a small pallet on the floor.

 

Their first night in Francis’ family home he has nightmares. Iris thinks they should leave, for that very reason. For their part, their marriage is on the rocks and they are attempting to start over. The next day they head North but the road is blocked. Not just with abandoned cars, it’s fenced off. Iris doesn’t want to turn back, she wants to try to open the fence against Francis’ objections.

 

She beats on the fence until a zombie guard gets up. This was an Army checkpoint until it was overrun. It’s not long before the van is surrounded. Zombies run in, all yelling the same thing over and over. It’s presumably the last thing they said when they were alive.

 

With Francis’ dad’s gun and luck, they escape and return to the family house, on foot. And Francis immediately starts seeing things, he has sparks of memory from his terrible childhood. But they got some fuel for the generator and turn the lights, A/C and music on.

 

Josh finds a radio and gets a signal but instead of news or music, it’s someone talking, like from a cb radio, and looking for survivors. Iris wants to search for them and for a doctor since Francis was bitten by a potentially rabid dog. Francis is uninterested in leaving the house because it’s safe there. But Iris and Josh are resisting. He doesn’t know it but Francis is acting irrationally. He’s having mood swings, fawning and violent outbursts.

 

While out doing a poor job of giving Josh shooting lessons, a bunch of church zombies rise out of the nearby field. Covered in blood they chase the family while screaming ‘In the name of the father, son and the holy spirit..” It is terrifying and they do not leave until someone with a car, lures them away.

 

Turns out, it Francis’ older brother, Diego (James Blanco), he lost his wife and son. Apparently, he had the same idea as Francis, to check on their parents. Diego hopes Francis and his family will travel north with him. Francis wants nothing to do with him and with that, Diego, leaves but he leaves Francis with a map.

 

When Francis returns to the house, he eludes to Iris that Diego is dead and he gets to work boarding up all the windows. In his paranoia, Francis hatches a plan to keep his family locked inside for the foreseeable future.

 

Josh tells the family about a map he saw in his parent’s room but Francis lies about it. Francis also announces that he wants another child. Iris, while she agreed to make up with him has been shocked by his behavior and definitely does not want another child with him. As a matter of fact, she wants to leave. And she wants to leave, now. But Francis he uses the kids to manipulate her. And he uses fear to manipulate the kids.

 

No matter what he says, Iris wants to leave and asks for the map. And so Francis sets it on fire. His behavior stuns their kids. Josh stands up for his mother and is cursed and called a bastard. After that, there’s an air of misery that never goes away. Joshua finally confronts Francis about locking them up and is sworn at and hit for his trouble.

 

When someone knocks on the door, begging for help, Josh disobeys and lets him in. Iris jumps to the injured soldier’s aid. He tells them the opposite of what Francis has been telling them, that there are hardly any zombies now, in the area and he’s the last of his unit.

 

That night, Josh confesses to his mother that he’s leaving, he’s going North and looking for Uncle Diego. He wants his mother to come with him but she says she can’t leave Lucas. Josh is determined to go, so he’s going alone.

 

Once Francis finds out Joshua is gone, he kills their guest and then assaults Iris, telling her she’s not leaving and she and Luke wake up in the hole he was forced to stay in as a child. They are officially captives.

 

Later, Francis brings in lunch, wearing the dead man’s bloody uniform and there’s meat on the tray but they don’t have any meat. They barely have any food. Iris refuses and lets him eat it on is own until he tries to intimidate Lucas into eating. He finally leaves after Iris distracts him.

 

They lure him back down later and Iris attacks. She grabs his keys and locks him in, leaves him screaming, ‘Daddy! No!!” Once they’re outside, they see a zombie gnawing on someone in the yard. It’s Diego and he says, ‘Go! Run!!’ as he’s running at her because he is now undead. Francis hears the screams and breaks out, after killing the zombie, he turns to kill Iris but Lucas starts to cry. He’s bleeding, he’s been bitten. Iris has to cut off his arm. And Francis suddenly turns into a child again. Iris is a nurse, Lucas’ll be fine but he needs a transfusion. Iris tells Francis to go get a car.

 

Francis runs to the van and he encounters Josh.  He just keeps saying Josh over and over again and clutching at the stitch in his side. He’s still wearing that bloody uniform and is covered in blood so Josh shoots him, assuming he’s a zombie. Josh drives the van back to the house.

 

This Philipine horror film was directed by Carlo Ledesma. While this is a zombie film, it’s actually a thriller with the zombie apocalypse as the back drop. The real story is about the danger everyone is in because of a traumatized family member who never got help and he spiraled in the home he was abused in and thus everyone was in more danger. This was very good and disturbing. The zombies were fast and they and the gore effects were very well done!