The Outsider

THE OUTSIDER
(2020)
OVERALL: GOOD

Seventy-two years young at this writing and Stephen King is still regularly cranking out the literary works.  The 2018 novel The Outsider is his fifty-ninth overall and only two years later, HBO debuted the ten part miniseries based off of it.  Developed and primarily written by fellow novelist and screenwriter Richard Price, it is for the most part pretty good.  So that is about it.  Ok byyyyeeeeee!

Well I guess we should elaborate.  It is a fair proclamation that at the very least, Stephen King can concoct some excellent premises.  While sometimes it is silly stuff like cars/laundry machines coming to life or giant rats living in subway tunnels, for the most part he thrives with haunted hotels, haunted hotel rooms, small towns slowly getting overrun with vampires, psychotic fans, demon clowns, and lots of creepy ass kids.  All solid, horror story footing to be sure.  The Outsider utilizes a somewhat lesser used supernatural entity of a doppelganger under the always reliable, steady guise of the "boogeyman", (which King has also directly written about once or twice before), but of course that is not what The Outsider is actually about.  It is about coming to terms with unexplainable, unimaginable trauma and the aforementioned "boogeyman" antagonist quite explicitly feeds off of just such trauma.  So once again, a rather perfect premise.  Job well done.

It is actually called "El Coco" which sounds more like a cereal mascot than a boogeyman, but I digress.

As far as how the show presents such material, it is a standard combination of contemporary horror tropes and prolonging a few plot points longer than is necessary, but it is also superb acting and has a very tense build up as well as a primary emphasis on the characters emotional footing which makes for almost immediate viewer immersement.  The wrap-up is not exactly perfect just as the journey along the way is not without a few flaws, but the things that work in The Outsider carry quite a lot of weight.  From the very opening, the world is meticulously revealed to us as are the horrific things that have just recently transpired in it.  There is blood, something has gone very wrong, there is going to be suffering, and we want to know much more.

For anyone unfamiliar and depending on who the author is, a doppleganger takes the exact form, (down to DNA and memories), of another person yet they are not biologically related.  So what if your doppleganger is, lets just say, not that swell of a guy/gal?  The Outsider presents contradictory evidence and lots of it, confused and incredibly distraught people forced in the middle of it, a confused and distraught community either making it their business or likewise being effected by it, all the while very seldom shots are shown of a hooded figure that is never in focus.  Yet the camera is showing us this figure all the same.  As our cinematically inclined brains are well programed to recognize, there obviously is a reason for this.  Just as there is a reason that as much as we are bombarded with the "obvious" conclusion that this particular person/persons must be the culprit, all cannot truly be what it seems.

"Nothing to see here.  Please move on." - Jason Bateman

The show sets everything into motion in a somewhat challenging way, bouncing around chronologically which it will continue to do throughout its ten episode run.  Sometimes we are shown things that we have already seen.  Sometimes they are callbacks from a different visual angle.  Sometimes it is surveillance footage that the increasingly frustrated people trying to get to the bottom of things compulsively cannot stop going over to try and make some kind, ANY kind of sense out of.  At the true heart of The Outsider, that is what is really going on.  How would something so incredible that so quickly has ruined the lives of so many people just relentlessly make them struggle with their own conscious and emotional stability?

There are a lot of great performances in The Outsider, (all of them really), that contribute greatly to how effective the program is on a visceral level.  Ben Mendelsohn as detective Ralph Anderson manages to mumble through his lines without becoming too grating to endure, but he is consistently conveying a man that is intensely guarding his true feelings if not helplessly blocking them.  Cynthia Erivo, (who has garnished the most attention for her performance here, fittingly so), as King's returning character Holly Gibney is an eccentric and savant, but comes off teetering on the edge in a more obvious manner, as if she is almost always terrified of the unexplained scenario that she is presenting to people/caught up in.  While the other characters and the actors portraying them are likewise excellent in their respective roles, (routinely breaking into an uninterrupted anecdote when they are asked a yes or no question), it is really Holly and Ralph that say the most about what is unbelievably happening with their every mannerism and bit of dialog.  The world is proving itself to be very crazy and these two very different people are equally invested in trying to come out alive and intact with how truly crazy it is.

Crazy not like how this Mr. Personality loveboat got divorced, but how he ever managed to get married in the first place.

On that note, some of what Holly does actually provides the series with its thankfully small yet still problematic shortcomings.  Waking up from a nightmare and yelling in slow motion and worse yet, walking into a ring of gunfire with half of her crew dead, (including her recently acquired, probably boyfriend), and yelling "Damn you to hell!" at the person shooting everyone is the kind of hokey, dramatic nonsense that regrettably breaks the spell of what is otherwise a thoroughly engaging experience.  There are a couple of other moments like a very random dinner scene where we get another example of how much social damage is done to the wife of the accused, (with many of the main characters also dining at the same restaurant, at the same time for whatever reason), that probably do not need to be there.  Yet as far as gripes about the proceedings, these are minor both in annoyance and frequency.

The finale of The Outsider makes enough sense to be sufficient, but it is also a bit underwhelming considering the last nine plus hours invested in gradually learning and being in fearful anticipation of the monster causing so much anguish.  Of course, the prospect of future seasons is just too damn tempting for networks and showrunners, so we are indeed given a legit, mid-credits scene, (not in King's novel btw), that could lead to more mischief for a round two.  Such a thing might work out just fine, but also is not required by any means.  As it stands, The Outsider is a well-written, well performed, tightly structured true crime horror outing that does its job of exploring grief, anguish, and especially in a time in history such as this, the real confusion of the world we live in and what true evil could be lurking in anyone's barn or strip club.

Meaning the true evil of polo shirts.  Naturally.