Outside

A family flees a zombie outbreak to ride out the apocalypse at the family farm, but old issues begin to surface, reopening old wounds, and eventually, those festering secrets become an even greater threat than the zombies outside their door.

Having clearly just been through some major shit, the Abel family—Francis, his wife Iris, and their sons Joshua and Lucas—are fleeing from a zombie outbreak in the city, to the home of Francis' parents' on their sugarcane plantation in the rural Philippines. But upon arrival, they find Francis' father and his maid both dead by suicide, after they were bitten, and his mother reanimated as a zombie. It's not the most optimal of homecomings, but after killing mom, Francis and his family set about settling in at the house.

Unfortuantly, Francis being home again only brings back his old childhood nightmares about his abusive father. Between that, the house being trashed, the fact that they’re low on supplies, and also surrounded by zombies, not to mention the fact that their marriage was already strained before the zombie outbreak, due to Francis having recently learned that Iris was unfaithful to him, and that it was with his older brother, Diego, who is actually Joshua's biological father...

It's not a great situation all around.

Finally, Iris convinces Francis that they need to find somewhere else to stay, somewhere safer and better stocked, but almost immediately, they get stopped at a zombie-infested bridge, blocked off by a collapsed military checkpoint and a bunch of abandoned vehicles. They are forced to abandon their van, and run back to the farm, and nail the doors shut behind them. Things only get worse from there, as a plethora of toxic issues take center stage, which, when coupled with their paranoia, their squabbles, their petty grievances, and the occasionally zombie attacks, leads to the little family hideaway turning into a charnel house.

Outside is a 2024 Filipino post-apocalyptic family drama zombie horror film written and directed by Carlo Ledesma, and while I would only say that this film was ultimately just "okay," the hands down best part of the film is the way it opens. The blood-streaked van, its passengers riding in silence, clearly in shock, is such a perfect way to open the story. It so clearly and effectively conveys everything that you need to know About where these characters have been, and what they have experienced. Really great.

That said, the farmhouse that they take refuge in looks like it's about three weeks away from officially being declared a dump, and while I get that film locations may be limited, I didn’t believe for a moment that it was a place where people lived. On top of that, it's also very distinct in both its architecture and lay out, so right away, I recognized that it was the same house that was used in that Filipino fairy horror movie In My Mother's Skin, and in that film, it worked, because it was rundown due to WW2 raging all around them. So, maybe this place looks like it's a dump because no one actually lives there, and it's only used occasionally for film shoots. Whatever the case, it was kind of distracting, to me at least.

Your mileage may vary.

It’s also a little unclear if these are actual zombies, meaning that they are the recently reanimated dead who can only be dispatched by destroying the brain, or the entire body, OR if they’re just people who have been infected with a virus and driven mad with bloodlust. I say this because, in the film, the zombies often seem like they're stuck in a “final thought” kind of state, like in the book Severance by Ling Ma, where they seem to be stuck repeating the last thing they were doing or thinking in their life, until they notice an uninfected person and then attack them. So, they could just be an infected person, and not actual zombie, but then... some have massive injuries too, the kind that a living person wouldn’t be able to survive, and that would seem to indicate that they're dead and have reanimated, but maybe the disease prevents them from realizing this, at least for a while? I don’t know. It probably doesn’t really matter, and honestly, only a couple of weirdos like me really give a shit, so whatever...

Anyway, Outside is much more about a family in crisis, and the cycle of abuse, than it is a zombie apocalypse, or what comes after the breakdown of society, or any horror, or gore, or exciting set-pieces. While it does a good job of highlighting the importance of community in a crisis, as well as exposing the rugged individual survivor archetype as a lie, it's missing the fun that’s really the whole point of these gory, dystopian survival horror films, and it definitely gets bogged down during all the scenes of family drama. Worst of all, it often seems to completely forget about the zombies altogether, and it’s clearly because it would rather focus on the crying and arguing and interpersonal drama, and all that brings with it, most of which is obvious and overly-familiar and takes too long to resolve, so as a result, the film is... fine, at best. Just fine. And honestly, it’s actually pretty boring.

I did appreciate the way that Francis went back and looted the checkpoint and all the vehicles on the bridge though. Gather resources and supplies, people! That’s just zombie apocalypse 101. So, there was that at least.

Otherwise… meh. Pass.