We live in a time where directors like Ti West are proving that familiar themes can be turned into masterpieces simply by the cast and crew doing a good job, yet there seems to be an emerging trend where other filmmakers think the way to jazz up unoriginal ideas is by obscuring what's happening and coming at their audience with the weapon of confusion. "The Outwaters" isn't quite as egregious as "Skinamarink", but I'll take a found footage movie with an unrealistically competent cameraman and a drip feed of exposition any day of the week over a movie that thinks I need to be as baffled as its protagonists and don't need to see what the fuck's going on half the time. Not that this weird tale of campers being wrecked by supernatural phenomena in the Mojave desert is aggressively bad or anything... it just isn't my thing at all and reflects a style of filmmaking that I kinda loathe. I mean, another director (not necessarily a Ti West, but even a Rob Savage) could have given these characters some semblance of personality, centred the action, and produced a much more rewarding movie than this experiment is. "The Outwaters" is a movie I'd have to trick myself into liking and I just don't have the energy for that.
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