It’s not often that a film or television show can succeed in utterly triggering my phobias but the opening scene of Outcast manages to trigger two. I am so averse to cockroaches, just your average American house variety, that I cannot be in the same room as them. I also have an unhealthy and complete phobia of blood which has had some interesting moments in my career as a first aider.
Yet there on the screen we’re treated to macro shots of a cockroach before Joshua Austin (Gabriel Bateman) slams his head into the wall and proceeds to lick his blood and the remains of the roach off it.
Then things get slightly weird.
Following a rather disturbing scene with some cereal in Joshua’s kitchen, I’m beginning to think that Outcast might be that over-the-top brand of surreal horror when the penny drops. Joshua is possessed and boy, is he far gone.
Meet Kyle Barnes. Kyle (Patrick Fugit) is back in town following a spectacularly failed attempt at being a husband and father and he is not in a good place. Kyle just wants to be alone comma dammit and through a series of flashbacks we begin to see why. Kyle has seen this kind of things before, the kind of thing where a demon turned a loved one into a rabid monster, and it seems that it is here to meet him again.
Kyle is dark and brooding and definitely damaged and I am beginning to suspect that Outcast is going to be my next major obsession.
Enter Reverend Anderson (Philip Glenister). The reverend was there the night it all went wrong with Kyle’s mother and it is he who comes looking for Kyle in the wake of this new tragedy. Can they save this boy before it is too late and can they prevent him suffering the same fate as Kyle’s mother?
One thing is for sure, Demon Joshua is a little too eager to see Kyle and just what is it that Kyle holds inside him that the system is so eager to get its lungs on? We don’t know yet but we do know that the demon is averse to Kyle’s blood. What is he exactly?
I try not to be picky when it comes to horror but I do prefer there to be an actual plot and some occasional character development. Outcast promises to have both and I am loving how the story unfolds with the use of flashbacks. We get small snippets of the events with Kyle’s mother but it is the flashbacks of his wife that are most telling. Yes, I definitely think this is going to become one of my favourite shows.
