Country: UK
Length: 86 minutes
Production Company: Mothcatcher Films
Producer: Kris R Bird
Director: Kerry Anne Mullaney
Assistant Director: Matthew J. Wilkin
Screenplay: Kerry Anne Mullaney, Kris R Bird
Editor: Kerry Anne Mullaney
Director of Photography: Kris R Bird
Music: Felix Erskine, David Wilsoni
Song: Evacuate by The Boxer Rebellion
Production Design: Tom Morrison
Special Effects: John Parnham
Makeup: Kerry Gunn
Sound Design: Anne Knox
Costume Design: Ailsa Rendell
Location: Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland
Cast: Sandra Louise Douglas (April) , Alton Milne (Daniel), Sharon Osdin (Kate) , Vivienne Harvey (Eleanor), John Erskine (April's Grandfather) , Phylis Douglas (April's Grandmother) , Robin Morris (Daniel's Son) , Max Adair (April's Brother) .
Website: www.thedeadoutside.co.uk
Reviewed at the US Premiere, Another Hole in the Head film festival, Roxie cinema, San Francisco, June 12th 2009.
Synopsis: Six months after a neurological plague turns the majority of the populace into incoherent, violent psychopaths, Daniel, fleeing from the infected family he didn’t have the heart to kill, runs out of petrol near a farmhouse in the Scottish Highlands. He quickly discovers that the house belongs to April, a teenager who inherited it from her grandparents. Daniel still injects the government-supplied vaccine that April blames for the spread of the infection, but the girl seems unaffected by the virus, despite frequent contact with the infected, and her habit of spending nights outside the farm’s barbed wire-covered walls, in a graveyard containing the many attackers she has killed. When Kate, a former nurse, arrives at the house, discussion turns to the possibility of April being the key to a cure, and a tense situation becomes potentially deadly.
Review: The first feature from music video director Kerry Anne Mullaney exists in world bleaker and farther north than 28 Days Later, and a little deeper inside the art house. The director makes a benefit of the lack of finance, with gritty visuals and an excellent performance from Sandra Louise Douglas (in her first role), as April, a girl soaked in horror, whose anger may have more meaning than mere teenage angst. The two lead characters exist on opposite sides of a moral divide—Daniel, a good man who still sees the infected as human beings, is haunted (it seems literally in a couple of scenes), by what he couldn’t bring himself to do, whereas April shoots on sight and is almost catatonic from the things she has seen, the people she has lost, and those she has killed.
The script refuses to layer on exposition, leaving the characters room to behave like real people, but sometimes frustrating and alienating the viewer (reminiscent—as is their production company name—of the work of fellow Scot Lynne Ramsay). Motives are unclear and intentions admirably guarded, but this causes a couple of scenes to fall flat, and there tends to be an over reliance on sound design to maintain the (admittedly effective) David Lynch-like atmosphere. This is balanced by a clear understanding of how to ratchet up tension—particularly in an early scene where April aims her scope rifle at Daniel, as she considers whether or not to simply kill him, and later in a point-of-view shot from under a vehicle, where the marauding infected are seen as slowly shuffling feet—and an admirable treatment of the infected, who are often confused and emotional before they attack, with their faces cast down, covered by hair, but then seen in lingering close-up after death, reinforcing their lost humanity (one slow pan down the corpse of an elderly lady reveals what appears to be dog shit on her shoe). [UPDATE: Kris R Bird was kind enough to let me know that the substance was actually leaves.]
Shot in two weeks, and self-financed on a micro budget, which is hardly an issue (though the barbed wire perimeter barely looks up to the task of keeping out sheep, let alone hoards of infected crazies), the production team of Mullaney and producer/co-scripter/cameraman Kris R Bird (who together created promos for Drive-By Argument and Cosmic Rough Riders), demand a lot from their audience, which is refreshing in an age where the horror film seems designed to evoke nothing beyond revulsion, and while this may leave their debut struggling to find an audience, it shows immense promise, and adds another strong, intelligent team to the new league of British horror auteurs.
Sandra Louise Douglas as April
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