From the opening scene of ‘Outside,’ writer/director Carlo Ledesma already lays the groundwork for his approach to the zombie genre. A beat-up van carrying four dirty, exhausted passengers pass through an empty highway flanked by sugarcane fields tells us everything that we need to know: the zombie apocalypse has already started, and this family is on the run. The film begins and they’ve already witnessed and experienced things. What exactly? While some of these events are spoken about much later on in the film, Ledesma expertly weaves in what the audience already knows about zombies to let our imagination do the work. It’s only from the cast’s performances that informs us how intense it all is. Sid Lucero, Beauty Gonzales, Marco Masa, and Aiden Tyler Patdu play the family and as we see them arrive at an old hacienda, we know what they’ve been through must have been hell.

And from here, this is what makes ‘Outside’ so refreshing. Ledesma knows the audience have expectations and continues to subvert it at every turn. You are expecting a zombie hoard but instead, he hits you with a complex domestic drama turned thriller all set in the backdrop of a zombie movie. Because while there are zombies, they are not the scariest thing in the film. For the pillars of this family – Sid Lucero’s Francis and Beauty Gonzales’ Iris – are not in good terms and their children, Masa’s Joshua and Patdu’s Lucas, are bearing the brunt of it.

Set in a broken-down hacienda somewhere in Negros Occidental, Ledesma uses the beautiful architecture of the house amidst the grand expanse of the sugarcane fields surrounding the mansion as a battleground for a broken family. Francis and Iris’ marriage is falling apart, and it unfortunately happens during a zombie outbreak. Tensions are high and moving back into Francis’ ancestral home reignites horrible memories of his traumatic youth with an abusive father.

The film unfolds slowly, establishing the deep hurts that have been embedded in each character, for even the children are not spared from the backlash of all of this emotional turmoil. Francis is trying to keep his family together while Iris is just looking for a place to feel safe and as the constant presence of zombies continue to complicate the already-tense situation, every emotion is amplified and pushes the characters to their limit.

‘Outside’ goes beyond the zombie genre and manages to intersect and weave in various plots – the domestic drama, psychological horror, and zombie movie – into one narrative. For those expecting a high-paced thriller, you might be disappointed (though there is one exceptional action-packed sequence at the start of the second act that is exquisitely choreographed and executed) as the film is more interested in developing and building up its characters.

Sid Lucero and Beauty Gonzales are wonderful at holding this whole film together. The film centers around the two of them and their battle of wills. Lucero handles Francis’ breakdown with all the layers that it requires so that it never feels like a caricature or some easy psychotic episode. He works on every individual dimension of his character’s burden: protecting his family, dealing with his trauma, reconciling with his wife, losing control, redefining the home he never wanted to return to. Gonzales, on the other hand, is a woman struggling against her lack of options. How does she get away from her husband with her kids when he has the key to the van, a gun, and a strong desire to keep everyone together. I was surprised by how this film was able to communicate how trapped some women must feel inside a broken marriage. While the zombies have taken multiple metaphors over the course of half a century or more since their appearance in the medium of cinema, this was the first time I saw the zombies as a metaphor for all the external forces that keep women in a failing marriage.

While I feel that the film could use a simpler plot – there are scenes that are there where I feel they only serve to offer new choices for Francis and Iris – what I love about ‘Outside’ is that it never goes out of its way to scare you. It is so confident that the dramatic situation is already tension-filled and frightening that it doesn’t go overboard in the filmmaking to scare you. No inorganic jump scares or overbearing music or crazy camera angles. It’s just clean, beautiful filmmaking that’s focused on character development that’s pushing the story forward. The fact that the film is well-acted, and the elements are fit for horror is just icing on the cake.

My Rating:

Outside is now streaming on Netflix! Click here to watch it now.