“The Outwaters” (Streaming on Tubi and Screambox)
A memorably nasty found footage experiment, Robbie Banfitch’s “The Outwaters” begins with a burst of energy through a panicked and chaotic 9-1-1 call that makes it pretty obvious something horrible is about to happen to its cast of four young dummies heading to the desert to shoot a music video. Presented as the combined footage of three memory cards from one of the crew member’s cameras, the film then goes into a slow build-up, keeping the danger in the periphery during the group’s camping trip. But even when things escalate suddenly in the film’s centerpiece scene, the danger remains out of sight and unexplained — in favor of a kaleidoscopic series of surreal terrors that reflect the protagonist’s increasingly delirious fear. The result is slippery and hard to define, which is part of what makes it so scary. —WC