Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Ben Mendelsohn, Cynthia Erivo, Jason Bateman, Bill Camp, Jeremy Pelley, Mare Winningham, Paddy Considine, Yul Vasquez, Julianne Nicholson, Marc Menchaca, Derek Cecil, Hettienne Park, Michael Esper, Steve Witting, Max Beesley, Martin Bats Bradford, Carlos Navarro, Franco Castan, Wes Watson.
In terms of his extraordinary output, Stephen King’s The Outsider has to rank, especially in the 21st Century, at the upper end of novels that connect with the human psyche and the unbalancing of fear to which he has immersed and soaked his name through with prolific ease.
It therefore stands that at some point a film producer or television executive was going to play their hand and see the novel transformed onto a larger medium and relish the thought of what has been the IT effect, the immense success of one of the writer’s novels brought to the screen and which both won absolute praise and more importantly, to those who see the world in the shape of Pounds, Dollars and Cents, accolades and profits.
It seems a far cry when the idea of transferring the ideas of Stephen King to another medium was perhaps deemed problematic, even with most of his works gaining impressive results, they were always considered not truly living up to the potential and vision that the stories wove. Then the second version of It hit the cinema screens and all that changed, suddenly the vision is being shown in depth, a ritual that will see other adaptions of the writer’s works given the full treatment, and in the ten part series The Outsider, it is the full treatment that is on offer, and gratefully received by the fans and onlookers alike.
One of the most disturbing novels of Stephen King’s later years, The Outsider returns the viewer/reader to the fear of childhood and the adults who turn a blind eye to the notion of the supernatural influencing the evil that dwells in humanity’s soul. Even a quick casted eye over the works of the leading and dominant horror writer of the last 50 years shows that what gets under the skin of the reader and viewer is when they are placed in the position of reliving the nightmare of losing a child, and aside from The Stand which deals with a deadlier proposition in that the whole world is torn from its position of comfortable silence, the adaptations of the books which infect the parent/child relationship are the ones that shock with the greater sense of urgency.
The Outsider does that in spades, it takes the idea of folklore, a creature from another age and gives it room in our current way of thinking. The world hinges on evidence, we are consumed by recording all that happens, we are controlled by the verification of the electronic age, and yet sometimes there extra eyes still don’t see the full picture, that we cannot accuse and bring to so called justice on the speculation of the mob-handed approach when all we have is fear running through our veins.
It is to the great credit of Ben Mendelsohn, Cynthia Erivo, Paddy Considine and Jason Bateman that The Outsider hit such a raw nerve, that it captures the vision of the novel and underlines the fact that for all the belief we have in us that we are reasoned and logical creatures, there are still moments when we are faced with the unknowable, the creature from our nightmares, how we deal with them is up to us, but we should never downplay or ignore the fear which strikes home.
A tremendous adaptation of one of the master of horror’s great works, a testimony to actually reading the source material and listening to the voice that inspired it. We all fear the outsider, we all feel the concern when we see someone new in town we don’t know, and whilst xenophobia is a cruel and despicable act, it also serves a purpose, that the stranger in our midst has perhaps come out of that place where nightmares are born.
Ian D. Hall