TV on Blu-ray Review: The Outsider - Season 1 (2020)

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Watching the great Ben Mendelsohn play a police detective still grieving the loss of his son to cancer in the HBO series The Outsider just weeks after he made me cry buckets of tears as a father trying to stay strong for the impending death of his daughter in the powerful Australian film Babyteeth got me thinking. Ben Mendelsohn's agent really needs to send him a script for a comedy. Still, for fans of brilliant character actors (like yours truly), Mendelsohn's misery is our gain. From anguish to skepticism to rage, whether it's in Animal Kingdom (2010) or Mississippi Grind or beyond, Ben Mendelsohn puts so much conflicting emotion into his performances that he completely pulls us into the mindset of his character, which we see play out over the course of ten riveting episodes in this HBO miniseries adaptation of the eponymous 2018 novel from Stephen King.

Assigned to solve the heinous slaying of a local eleven-year-old boy, Mendelsohn's Georgia detective Ralph Anderson is shocked when a plethora of evidence including eyewitness testimony, security camera footage, and DNA all points at his son's former Little League coach, Terry Maitland (a terrifically understated Jason Bateman). A well-respected high school English teacher and married father, the seeming betrayal of this veritable picture of clean-cut, white picket fence domesticity inspires fury in Anderson, who sends his colleagues out to make a very public arrest of Maitland in front of the entire community.

 
Requesting his lawyer (the always outstanding Bill Camp) and pleading his innocence, Maitland informs the detective that he wasn't even in town when the murder committed but at a teacher's conference roughly seventy miles away instead. Checking the security footage at the hotel and finding him there, Anderson finds himself completely baffled by how the man could be in two totally different places at once, which sends him on an odyssey towards the horrifically supernatural. Soon working alongside intuitive private investigator Holly Gibney (brought marvelously to life by Cynthia Erivo), the series evolves from a grim but gripping police procedural into something that could only come from the mind of Stephen King.

Adapted from King's work by series showrunner Richard Price, a novelist and screenwriter who penned such '80s classics as The Color of Money and Sea of Love before he wrote for TV's The Wire, The Night Of, and The Deuce, among others, the reason this show works as well as it does is because it's so firmly rooted in reality. We all know a Terry Maitland and a Ralph Anderson, as well as their supportive but equally complex wives (well played here by Julianne Nicholson and Mare Winningham) and the series never loses its grip on everyday contemporary life even when it heads into dicey, unexplainable supernatural territory. Though technically a work of science fiction, The Outsider ranks among the best King adaptations in its decision to endear us to its fully realized characters and let them be our guide into this new world before it drops us straight into the unknown. 

 
While the sudden, slightly abrupt ending doesn't entirely pay off on the incredibly thrilling series-long build-up involving the question of an evil spirit somehow inhabiting or attaching itself to a person, the rest of The Outsider is so insanely compelling — as is the staggeringly gifted cast — that it's well worth the watch. Addicting enough that I devoured all ten installments of The Outsider over the course of two days (quarantine, baby!), the opening pair of episodes directed by Jason Bateman are two of the strongest I've seen from HBO since the days of The Night Of.

Predictably, however, it does use the same grimy palette of saturated colors so indicative of prestige TV series that it's inspired articles all over the web and is also a main feature of Bateman's Netflix series Ozark. A definite bone of contention — given that it's now become a stylistic cliché for prestige offerings — when it comes to The Outsider, however, I am definitely fine with a Stephen King universe devoid of bright primary colors or high key lighting, especially considering the morose, haunting subject matter. 

 
Yet, despite this, far too frequently in the series — and especially in those middle episodes once it ventures beyond procedural territory — The Outsider's recurring lack of light makes it nearly impossible to see what is going on, no matter how many curtains you draw or the color settings you select for your television screen. While the brightest high power setting of "vivid" is undoubtedly the last way the craftsmen behind The Outsider would want viewers to watch this show, it was the only way I could even begin to make out what was happening in a few scenes, which is a major letdown from an aesthetic standpoint overall.

Still highly recommended nonetheless, the new box set of the HBO series — which, rumor has it, may return with another installment featuring Erivo's Gibney — arrives complete with short special features boasting interviews with King, Price, Mendelsohn (who also produced the series), Bateman, and the rest of the cast. Additionally providing a digital code so that you can stream the entire series in addition to playing the included Blu-rays, with the frequently aggrieved but superb Ben Mendelsohn as our guide, the show gives us a hair-raising opportunity to see where the wild things are outside while staying safely indoors (or so we think). 

 
Text ©2020, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. https://www.filmintuition.com  Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  Also, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases made off my site through ad links. FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Blu-ray Review: Carrie (2013)

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Photo Slideshow  
 

"What did Carrie White ever do to you?” 

Although it’s always been shelved alongside other tales of teenage torment from Friday the 13th to Halloween, in my eyes, Brian DePalma’s Carrie – just like William Friedkin’s Exorcist – has always had more in common with Greek Tragedy than a true work of horror.

And while a lot of genre works stem from a place of anguish and revenge with an emphasis on the outsider – whether it’s Jason’s grieving mother in Friday or an institutionalized brother in Halloween, those titles always waded more heavily in the pool of horror rather than walking the fine line between horror and tragedy.

 

What perhaps it comes down to is the issue of choice and free will verses the victimized villains (a la Exorcist and Carrie) who find themselves pushed into supernatural experiences beyond their control. And while one can argue that unlike the possessed young girl in The Exorcist, Carrie does eventually develop some control over her telekinetic powers – as a combination of bullied victim meets superhero origin story – ultimately there’s something undeniably tragic about this girl that leads to her downfall.

The tragedy is undoubtedly multiplied by the innocence of Carrie as a girl out of time and out of step with the rest and likewise as one who never wished harm on others but whose own emotional tidal wave of repeated bullying shoves her into the role of aggressor against her will in a way that’s heartbreaking to behold.

 

And indeed in former teacher turned author Stephen King’s debut novel, Carrie tells the story of the dangers of bullying in a way that views the problem and the moral lessons of it through a fantastical kaleidoscope of horrifying tragedy.

Though undoubtedly shocking in its day – when pared down to its essence and with the absence of the supernatural, King’s plotline has become much too common four decades later. And given that we live in an era of peer torment on an unprecedented scale where tales of bullying-fueled school-shootings and suicides regularly unfold on the evening news, Carrie has become all the more tragic and timelier today than it was when it was first published in 1974.

As Sue Snell, the good girl who finds herself doing a bad thing states late into the 2013 remake, “you can only push someone so far before they break” and break Carrie does once again in this third adaptation of King’s novel, following DePalma’s 1976 feature as well as 2002’s made-for-television take on the storyline.

 

The first version to be directed by a woman as well as the first starring an actress precisely the right age of the high school character as opposed to the twenty-somethings that had tackled the part in the past, Boys Don’t Cry filmmaker Kimberly Peirce helms a powerful, contemporary and far more emotionally driven female-centric adaptation than we've previously encountered.

Brought vividly to life by the effective one-two punch epitomized by the two women at the heart of the film in the form of Chloe Grace Moretz and Julianne Moore, Peirce’s Carrie is strengthened by their potent portrayals of the eponymous character and her fiercely protective, religious zealot mother.

As opposed to making their relationship as much of a fear-based power struggle (as a sort of home-based extension of the horrific bullying Carrie White endures at school) that we experienced in DePalma’s original, Peirce’s treatment of their relationship is much more complicated and multi-layered.

 

For the first time and to this great of an emphasis, we actually see the amount of true love and affection that the two have for each other that they don’t fully know how to reconcile with their protective instincts as such psychologically broken, fragile individuals.

Yet at the same time, we also witness their dynamic from the point-of-view of the mother as well as the daughter, which makes us fully appreciate where they’re coming from as three-dimensional human beings.

While Moore is predictably perfection as her take on Margaret White opens her up so we can see her vulnerabilities and self-loathing as well as her fierce drive to shelter her daughter, Peirce’s film allows offers more insight to other supporting female characters as well.

Addressing the pregnancy of Sue Snell for the first time onscreen, thus making her drive to make amends for her peer-pressure induced poor behavior that much richer – Peirce’s Carrie uses the bond of mother and child and the circle of life as a subtextual throughline for the work from its shocking opener to its devastating finale.

Additionally, 2013’s Carrie gives 13 Going on 30 star Judy Greer a great opportunity to break out of her typecast “best friend” romantic comedy roles. As Carrie’s sympathetic gym teacher who tries to not only get to the bottom of a hellish bout of bullying that occurs in the first act but also attempts to prevent further harm to Carrie for better or worse, we now see her as another variation of a “mother” role in Greer’s nuanced portrayal.

While Peirce’s conceptual take on the arc of Carrie as a sort of superhero origin story does offer the eponymous lead a chance to adapt to her powers in a way that illustrates that the formerly wholly vulnerable girl is coming into her own, the doomed prom payoff never quite makes this spin work on the level she hoped.

Nonetheless, Moretz is a marvel given her impressive physical transformation in the subtle ways she changes from one scene to the next. A fully realized performance evidenced by the evolution of Carrie’s posture, body language and tone of voice, Moretz is convincing not only in her dominant, more feral take on Carrie the telekinetic woman-wronged witch but also in quieter moments as the withdrawn-into-herself victimized girl who wishes she could blend into the lockers and be left alone.

And actually because Moretz is so strong in convincing us of her evolution, it makes it a bit harder in her final showdown to see her as a broken, bullied girl verses a deadly aggressor given how active Moretz is moving her arms and turning the titular character into something more otherworldly than human.

Although Moretz definitely needs a cinematic change of pace as Carrie is yet another super-dark role for this impressive young woman’s already ultra-violent resume (following her onscreen breakthrough turns in the Kick-Ass series and Let Me In), she effectively defies her glamorous old-Hollywood style beauty to make her Carrie a relatable everygirl.

In the end, it’s so similar to DePalma’s classic that it’s hard to argue that remaking Carrie was cinematically necessary since they stayed so true to the original work. However because the few changes that were made fully humanize the supporting players and delve deeper into the heart of the mother/daughter plotline, it works in Peirce’s favor overall.

 

Yet by hitting us on a different level, this visceral, emotional approach likewise guarantees that Peirce’s Carrie is even more tragic than previous adaptations were before.

While originally ahead of its time given King’s emphasis on bullying, it’s a shame that as it stands now forty years later, kids still haven’t learned a lesson from the traumatic tale of Carrie White. Therefore, it’s that much more important for viewers to understand that as opposed to a horror story where the title character is the villain, the real horror of Carrie is what happens to Carrie White rather than Carrie White herself.

While the thing about movies is that they mean something different to everyone, Peirce has done a superb job of driving this point home by tackling Carrie with the same genuine empathy and humanity evidenced throughout her filmography.

Featuring an alternate ending that plays on the circle of life and bond between mother and child that nonetheless would’ve ended the movie on the wrong emotional note in its depiction of Carrie as villain verses victim, Fox’s stunning Blu-ray transfer also serves up multiple making-of-featurettes, interviews and a fun candid camera tie-in telekinetic prank played on coffee shop regulars. And by including an Ultraviolet digital copy of the film to download or stream, Fox and ScreenGems ensure you’ll be able to take Carrie White with you wherever you go from gym class to the prom.

   

Text ©2014, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

The Mist

Director:
Frank Darabont

Attention market shoppers, we have carnage on aisle four.

In the aftermath following a violent storm that wreaked havoc on a small Maine town, movie poster artist David Drayton (Thomas Jane) notices an ominous mist that has appeared over the lake. Packing up his young son Billy (Nathan Gamble) and offering a ride to his one-time enemy, the New York lawyer Brent Norton (Andre Braugher) with whom he’s begun to tentatively mend fences while evaluating their respective property damage, the three head into town to stock up on supplies for what they predict will be another violent New England storm.

Once inside their local market which, like the town itself, seems to be a place that has escaped time in its quaint 50’s like aura, they share stories with others and are startled when an elderly man runs into the store visibly shaken and bloodied, yelling, “Something in the mist took John Lee! Don’t go out there!"

Something in the man’s tone, not to mention the blood begins to cause a panic and while most feel confident to trust their neighbor, they watch in horror as a disbelieving man exits the store. Shockingly vague violence and screams follow, leaving the man dead and thus begins one of last year’s most chilling sleepers that can only have come from the godfather of suspense himself, Mr. Stephen King.

Adapted by longtime King fan, Shawshank Redemption and Green Mile writer/director Frank Darabont, this moodily haunting horror film sets itself up like a modern episode of The Twilight Zone (and in a DVD feature King notes that he was inspired by the horror classic TV show Panic). With an emphasis on characterization and psychology, we feel as terrified as the townspeople as they barricade themselves inside the market and logically try to deduce not only what’s going on outside the store but also their next steps in how to proceed from there.

Initial worries that the mist was a chemical pollution cloud soon give way to greater fear when the resident town psycho, the (as King said) warden-like Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden) pulls out her bible and begins to whip a group of shoppers into a Revelations frenzy saying that the wrath of God has been unleashed on the town heathens and the end is near. After further carnage ensues when additional townspeople are killed by seemingly otherworldly beasts as they test the limits of their imprisonment, soon the store is divided into two groups with Mrs. Carmody gaining momentum on one side and the more proactive, sensible citizens headed up by David Drayton, shopkeeper Ollie Weeks (a terrific Toby Jones) and the town’s new schoolteacher Amanda Dunfrey (star of Darabont’s Majestic, Laurie Holden) becoming the minority banding together in a different aisle.

It’s by this point that the audience, nearly working in tandem with David and his group, try to solve the mystery on their own, although admittedly we realize that the horrifying vagueness of the situation is precisely what is driving most of the fear, as both on and off the screen fingers all seem to point in the direction of the nearby military base long accused of dabbling in the extraterrestrial in a top secret operation called Project Arrowhead.

While we’re never quite sure the mystery itself will be solved, we’re riveted the entire way, although I found myself disappointed when The Mist morphed from a tense, thinking person’s horror film into one obsessed with mutant bird-sized bugs and slimy tentacle creatures as opposed to concentrating on the fear-based psychological breakdown and terrifying "group-think" mentality. Thus, as the running time increases, The Mist becomes an overdone and not terribly satisfying B movie, which may have played better in the black and white photography that director Darabont had intended (and indeed the color and black and white versions will be released in a 2 disc DVD set).

Although granted, Mrs. Carmody’s conversion of the shoppers seems to occur much too quickly, the film’s dual horror show of oversized mutants and bible thumping madmen and women keep us distracted enough to forgive some of the film’s flaws and ultimately its high-speed pace and clever characterization make this a roughly average thriller that’s strengthened considerably by its much discussed, shocking conclusion that, although it wasn’t written in King’s novel, seems to be the only fitting finale. In fact, the conclusion was so vital to the film’s storytelling success that writer/director Darabont received confirmation from the Weinstein Company and Dimension Films that his original script including that unforgettable ending could not be aletered.

Best viewed on a sunny, mist-free day, while Darabont’s The Mist will most likely be overshadowed by superior King adaptations such as Kubrick’s The Shining, Reiner’s Misery and Stand By Me, and Darabont’s own Shawshank Redemption, it’s still a deft chiller and one that, as Darabont noted on the DVD, actually made the legendary King jump “three feet” during a screening of the film. And in the end, box office and reviews aside, scaring King with his own material should be the truest form of evaluation for any King adaptation.