He’s Out There (2018)

Movie: He’s Out There (2018), directed by Quinn Lasher

Watched on: Amazon Prime

Ran: 7.26 miles, 8’54”/mile, 01:04:34 (recovery run)

 

Oh boy, what do I do with He’s Out There? I doubt I ever would have thought to watch it at all, except it happened to be on Pluto TV’s horror channel while I was doing other things and I got sucked in after missing the first twenty minutes. So I checked, and Amazon Prime had it available, which meant not only could I see it from the beginning during my nightly run, but I could also watch it without being interrupted by commercials urging me to “climb aboard the Trump train” every seven minutes. (The movie’s plenty scary enough already, thank you very much.) But I have a polar ambivalence about how to rate it, because while He’s Out There does a whole bunch of stuff badly, it does a few key things very, very well.

 

On its face, He’s Out There appears to be yet another generic slasher film with yet another masked maniac preying on yet another helpless group of victims stranded in the woods. This time the prey are Laura and her two young daughters Kayla and Maddie, who have gone up to their lake house for one last late-season weekend away; Laura’s husband Shawn will be driving up alone after his business meeting, and expects to arrive later that night. The gate is unlocked for Laura by a local named Owen (we are never told his full name, but I suspect it’s “Owen Exposition”), who casually mentions that the house’s previous owners had a kid who vanished in the woods, and they took it real hard so they sold the place and moved away.

 

It’s not long before creepy stuff starts happening. The kids find a secret tea party in the woods, Maddie winds up poisoned and vomiting, there are scary noises and an unknown presence in the house, and pretty soon Laura sees a masked guy waving from the driveway. Shawn still hasn’t arrived, and Laura needs to get Maddie to a doctor, but of course Masked Guy has disabled the car (in a more exciting manner than usual, I might add), so the terrified family tries to hole up and wait for Dad to show up and save the day. You can probably guess how that turns out, so it’s up to Laura and the kids to survive until morning.

 

Like I said, there’s a lot to dislike about He’s Out There beyond the generic title. Its undersaturated palette jives with my personal aesthetic, but it makes the film look like it wants to be a Zack Snyder movie. Its plot relies on numerous conveniences of the laziest slasher writing—the psychic killer, the teleporting killer, Owen Exposition, the Guy Showing Up to Save You Who Is Immediately Eviscerated, the Other Guy Showing Up to Save You Who Immediately Has His Arms Ripped Off, etc.—and also has more holes in it than a camp counselor on Saturday the 14th, especially in the last 15 minutes or so. And yet, despite relying heavily on slasher tropes, the movie doesn’t really succeed as a traditional slasher, because how high of a body count can you rack up when there are only six characters total? (Well, seven, if you count a store clerk with a single line who is nowhere near the action.)

 

Some people are also going to be irked that we never learn the killer’s whole backstory or motivation, but I think I’m mostly okay with that; it’s less satisfying narratively but probably more effective from a horror perspective. I mean, Black Christmas is a classic BECAUSE we never get the whole deal on the killer, not in spite of it. But I honestly don’t know how to feel about the killer in He’s Out There going the Michael Myers “silent but deadly” route for the entire first part of the movie and then suddenly getting an extended monologue in the third reel. It’s like seeing Jason Voorhees suddenly burst into a lesser-known Cole Porter song about heads on sticks.

 

Here’s the main thing, though: He’s Out There actually scared me. If you’re the right sort of viewer, it digs into some pretty raw nerves: kids being hurt because you failed to protect them, kids being terrorized while you’re powerless to help them, kids witnessing the brutal death of their parents. Most of the credit should probably go to the performers, because Yvonne Strahovski really nails it as the mom who has to lie to her kids and tell them everything’s going to be okay when she knows nothing will ever be okay again. And real-life sisters Anna and Abigail Pniowsky are perfect as Kayla and Maddie; their behaviors and reactions to the horrors befalling them are so authentic it burns.

 

I should mention that a lot of viewers seem to have a problem with the girls being “annoying,” but take it from the full-time primary caregiver of a daughter since her birth: those kids are just acting like actual kids. And my experience is not limited to parenthood, either; I was also an in-class kindergarten helper and a Girl Scout Leader from Brownies up through 8th grade, and our Brownie troop of two dozen girls at one point included THREE sets of twins. So yeah, I think I have a pretty well-informed opinion when I say that the sisters in He’s Out There acted pretty much exactly as I think most sisters that age would behave in their unbearable situation, and it’s tough to watch in exactly the way it should be.

 

So there you go: if you’re looking for a by-the-numbers slasher flick with a lot of gore and body parts piled to the heavens, this isn’t the movie for you. Likewise, if you dislike kids or find them irritating, you’re going to find He’s Out There both formulaic AND annoying. But if you’re a parent, or you like kids, or you have enough empathy to imagine what it would be like to be, say, seven years old and rely on your parents for safety and security only to sense their own mortal terror or witness their helpless demise at the hands of the Bogeyman, well… pleasant nightmares.