‘Outside’ (2024) Netflix Movie Review - A Brainless Storyline on Brainless Zombies

The zombie genre has always been a favorite of mine, so I was excited to dive into this film. Unfortunately, it turned out to be one of the most disappointing zombie movies I've seen in a long time. Despite a simple premise that could have worked with better execution, the movie fails to deliver on multiple fronts, leaving viewers with a sense of incompleteness and frustration.

The story revolves around Francis and Iris, a couple struggling to keep their family together amidst growing tension. Francis recently discovered that his son Joshua isn't biologically his, which creates a deep rift between them. The couple has another son, Lucas, but the strain of this revelation causes Francis to detach from Joshua emotionally. Compounding this, Francis had a difficult childhood, which seems to impair his ability to make rational decisions in the face of adversity. The family flees the city in their rusty wan and runs to the rural part to escape zombies. Within the initial moments, Francis kills his mom after she becomes a zombie and attacks him.

Much of the movie centers on the increasingly fraught relationship between Francis and Iris. Francis becomes suspicious that Iris is having an affair with Diego, and his paranoia only deepens as the situation outside the house worsens. Zombies are wreaking havoc in the world beyond, but the real threat seems to come from within their fractured family unit. Francis's descent into paranoia reaches a critical point when he mistakenly kills a soldier who wasn’t even infected, driven by his inability to distinguish between real danger and his internal fears.

The biggest problem with Outside is that it feels more like a family drama with zombie window dressing, rather than a true entry into the zombie genre. At one point, you might even forget that the backdrop is supposed to be a zombie apocalypse because the focus shifts almost entirely to Francis’s increasingly paranoid behavior and his strained relationship with Iris. The film sets up the external threat of zombies but quickly sidelines it in favor of domestic disputes, making the plot feel disjointed and unbalanced.

Francis, the central character, dominates the narrative as his paranoia and distrust of Iris become the driving force of the story. The film dedicates so much time to his psychological unraveling that the external threat of the zombies is almost forgotten, making the apocalypse feel more like a minor inconvenience rather than a life-or-death situation. The focus on the marital strife between Francis and Iris, while potentially compelling in another context, feels misplaced here.

The pacing is another major issue. Outside drags unnecessarily, stretching what could have been a tight, tense plot into a sluggish narrative that loses momentum halfway through. The early promise of a tense, apocalyptic thriller quickly dissolves into repetitive arguments and drawn-out scenes that add little to the story. As a result, the film loses its sense of urgency, and the zombie threat feels almost irrelevant.

Ultimately, Outside fails to strike a balance between its family drama elements and the zombie genre. For zombie fans, this film might be a disappointment, as it doesn't deliver the thrills or scares that come with the territory. Instead, it’s a slow-burn character study that never fully commits to its apocalyptic premise.

Final Score- [4/10]
Reviewed by - Neerja Choudhuri
Follow @NeerjaCH on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times