A Road Trip To Nowhere
The Outsider should have been a six-part mini-series. There’s potential here for a really engrossing, creepy horror with a consistent thriller tone to it, and to be fair the first two episodes nailed this perfectly. Since then though, The Outsider has slammed on the brakes and struggled to get going again after some really slow episodes. Episode 7 of The Outsider begins with Glory preparing for her return to work. As she does, Ralph starts looking through the evidence back home, deliberating over a picture of the neck burns and wondering what it means. On the road, Jack tells Holly he believes in the bogeyman now and proceeds to show her his neck. He winces in pain while Holly continues to drive toward the barn, ignoring a call from Ralph. Sensing something amiss, Ralph heads to Jack’s apartment and finds the place trashed, along with blood spatters all over the place. Ralph scrambles over to Tamika’s and asks questions about Jack but she remains guarded, prompting our investigator to drive up to the strip club where he does finally get a breakthrough. With this information, he races off to try and find Holly and Jack. Holly tries to delay Jack’s plans and stops at a gas station, heading into the toilets but without her phone, which Jack took from her moments before. However, she outsmarts him as he heads out to check on her, smashing the glass in the window and scrambling out the front door, managing to drive away. Glory meanwhile, struggles at work as a real estate agent, with the couple she shows around asking questions about Terry. She snaps at them, causing them to file a complaint and with her life crumbling around her, she phones Howard and tells him she wants to go ahead and sue. Ralph and the others catch up with Holly and as she tells them what happened with Jack, Ralph contemplates what it all means and realizes they weren’t heading for the barn – they were going in the opposite direction. Where was Jack taking her? Before we can find out, the group turn on Ralph, who keeps trying to find rational answers where there are none. The final straw comes from the bloodied picture of Terry shaking hands in the night club, which Holly winds up shouting at him about given he excluded that picture from her originally. While Ralph tries to find answers, Holly has a nightmare involving Jack coming after her and shooting her in the face. As the gunshot blasts through her skull, she awakens and screams to the heavens where the episode ends. Beyond Holly and Jack’s road-trip and a couple of late bursts of tension, there isn’t really much else here worth noting. The series is certainly gearing up for a climactic showdown but there just isn’t a lot else going on here. This recap could easily have been summarised in around two sentences in terms of plot progression, with most of this 50 minute episode entombed by fluff and pointless investigative work. It’s such a shame to see The Outsider peter out like this because the premise is intriguing and the idea of a grief monster feeding on grief while hunting those consumed by it has a real poetic ring to it. Unfortunately the series has failed to hit the right notes and unless something spectacular occurs over the next few weeks, it’s unlikely The Outsider will reach the same pinnacle heights it so easily could have achieved.
