REVIEW: Generational trauma and inner demons haunt Netflix's 'Outside'
Making its bow on Netflix, Outside is a psychological horror film from director Carlo Ledesma.
Touted as the streaming platform’s first Philippine zombie movie, Outside details one family’s attempts to survive the arrival of the undead. Set in an unnamed province (that looks an awful lot like Ledesma’s native Bacolod), the story follows Francis (Sid Lucero), Iris (Beauty Gonzalez), and their two sons, Joshua (Marco Masa) and Lucas (Aiden Tyler Patdu) as they take shelter in Francis’ ancestral home. As the days wear on, Francis will try to keep his family together, no matter the cost.
Sid Lucero is superb as Francis, a man haunted as much by his insecurities as he is by the ghosts of his past (to say nothing of the undead). As Francis is consumed by his wife’s infidelity and, consequently, his firstborn’s parentage, Lucero delivers a magnificent slow burn that has the preview audience on tenterhooks. The ambiguity around Francis being a regular man pushed to the breaking point is up to the viewer, as the screenplay smartly avoids spelling out precisely how or when the cracks in the marriage formed.
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For as much time as Outside spends on Francis and his forays into the surrounding areas, one wishes more had been afforded to Beauty Gonzalez as Iris. While she does get to flex her acting muscles later, the actor spends most of the film’s first two hours sporting a single, pained facial expression. This changes in the run-up to the final act, when Iris’ emotional dam finally bursts, allowing Gonzalez to impress with a performance that effectively negates how one-note the character was previously.
Talented cast aside, Outside works largely because of its (implied) Negrense setting. By situating the action in a locale known for intrinsic social traditions and enforced propriety, Ledesma elevates the horror from survivalist to existential levels.
At the premiere, the director revealed that his original concept was set in the Australian suburbs, and it’s genuinely difficult to imagine that version hitting nearly as hard as this one does, much less doing anything we haven’t already seen in dozens of films, games, and/or tv shows.
“[Moving the setting to the Philippines] switched on a whole new creative flow for me,” Ledesma told the media. “At the same time, COVID happened. So now all these emotions started coming in…all my fears and anxieties as a parent suddenly came flowing into the pages. Yes, it's a film about zombies, but ultimately, this is a film about an imperfect family that's just really trying to do their best – no one here is perfect.”
In any case, Outside may draw from its genre’s oeuvre, but it isn’t beholden to them, as Ledesma’s script expertly leverages domestic drama tropes against the localized apocalypse in ways Pinoy audiences wouldn’t necessarily get from, say, The Walking Dead or World War Z.
Emotionally brutal, with moments of intense violence and gore that audiences have come to expect, Outside is a compelling watch that highlights the horrors of generational trauma, and the dangers of letting old wounds fester.
Ledesma’s ability to weave his stories with mounting dread is on full display: having his creatures mindlessly repeat their dying words isn’t just a fascinating addition to zombie mythos, it’s an affectation that reiterates the film’s themes in truly devastating fashion while remaining infinitely more subtle than any of Francis’s family heirlooms.
Because if the undead can’t let go of the past, what hope would the living have?
Outside is now streaming exclusively on Netflix.