He’s Out There (2018) is one of the most cliche and boring movies I have ever seen and I have seen a lot of horror movies in my day. He’s Out There (2018) movie review
The movie follows Laura (played by Yvonne Strahovski) who goes to an isolated cabin with her two daughters Kayla and Maddie in order to have a nice family vacation. Her husband Owen (played by Julian Bailey) is also there but he is not much in the movie. While the premise has been done many times before, I wanted to give it a try just to see if it offered anything new. Unfortunately I was really disappointed it showed NOTHING new.
The entire movie moves slowwwly with nothing happening for at least 45 minutes. Well, besides Laura waiting for her husband to get back home and her reading to her kids. After they realize somebody is out there watching them, it really doesn’t make the story any better. From this point on, the two girls scream at their mom whenever they hear any type of noise outside. This gets really annoying. They are also not very bright (why would you eat a cupcake left out in the middle of the woods?!?). They are young but they didn’t seem stupid. Maybe I was wrong.
Anyway, for the rest of the movie, the three of them go hiding from room to room. Only few creepy things happened involving a children’s book and bunch of weird looking mannequins. There is not other characters to at least rack up the violence. There is few creepy/bloody scenes and maybe two or three scenes with violence shown on screen. That’s it. The rest is filled with kids screaming their heads off. Also a kid getting sick, few loud noises and a mother trying to keep it together. It was not bad necessarily, just boring. There was no solid substance to it and it felt derivative and completely unnecessary.
On top of this the killer has the most pointless and boring backstory I have ever seen. They didn’t even try to give him a decent reason for being there. If they said he escaped prison and went on a killing spree (done a million times), it would have been much more interesting than what they came up with, not to mention more original. He didn’t look menacing or memorable in any kind of way. If he killed a bunch of people, I would have at least said it had a decent body count. I can’t even say that.
Also, the movie doesn’t give us much on the actual killer. So if you like movies where everything is explained, you will be very disappointed with this one. By the time the killer showed up I wanted to give up on the movie but I pushed through it hoping to see something new. However, the ending itself was a complete mess and as cliche as it gets. You can guess my level of disappointment on that front.
This movie was mainly made for those people who like scary movies but don’t like all the killing and gore. There is nothing necessarily bad about that. More power to them, but it didn’t work for me. The color correction of the movie made the color all muted and bleak which can work for some movies but it made this one appear cheap and bland. It almost comes off as a high school film project, which is a shame as many scenes were well shot and framed.
I believe the people who will enjoy this movie are those who are not into bloody graphic violence but want more of a genetic scary movie that has real characters trying to survive a madman on the run. It is boring in many ways and many reviews state the kids’ constant screaming ruins the movie, but it is not a really bad movie. It lacked a lot of things that horror community tends to love. However, it is a perfect movie for a non-horror fans looking for a decent Halloween movie.
Thanks for reading my He’s Out There (2018) movie review
