Wonderful character development!

How sad is this?

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

It's difficult to know what movie-goers want sometimes. Do they want the usual product with its anodyne plot line, CGI and names you've heard of? Or do they want something different that might challenge their preconceptions of what a good movie is? Do they want to praise a film for trying to be a bit different even if not perfect or do they look for signs of weakness in anything they see, delighting in the opportunity to trash something? Outcast has a lot of faults. The creature effects are a bit wobbly, it's slow in places and could do with tightening up, some of the acting is mediocre. And yet this does try to be different. It's horror mixed with social realism as some have already pointed out. It's visually striking and well photographed although shaky cam sometimes gets the better of it. Some of the acting is very good indeed – I was particularly impressed by the ferocity of both Kate Dickie and James Nesbitt and kudos to him for appearing in this low budget film yet not holding anything back.The story will make you work and it will help if you have some concept of how myths and legends operate (and who doesn't, it's in our psyche). There is a resolution which makes perfect sense in the context of the story. It's not a fun movie and probably not a date movie! Outcast is a brave attempt to make something different. It has lots of faults but they are ones I am happy to forgive because of the efforts and obvious good intentions of all involved in making it.

What happens when you like horror movies in addition to a dozen of other horror/action/adventure/TV shows but only have limited amount of time and money? You get Outcasted.I stopped counting around 12 or so of movies (and one TV show – the blatant references to The Sarah Connor Chronicles made me wonder if they had an original idea) Outcast reminded me of. One in particular, The Beast Within, sadly I have not finished watching (thanks Netflix streaming for holding my place) but it sure had similarities to the hour I've seen so far.While I'm always attracted to werewolf movies, I was surely tricked into seeing this one. The trailer didn't give too much and the poster – oh, boy – really made me think I was going to see one. Do not be fooled: this has as much to do with the werewolf lore as Twilight: New Moon does.Also, this movie is just plain overloaded with far too many plots/directions and it doesn't help that, though they speak English, the accents were as thick as the blood spilled in the film. Though I did admire they didn't make a straight-forward horror/beast story, this really bogged it down too far for most to follow. Further, they shot most of it in the dark – and I mean DARK, so good luck with the visuals.(The following paragraph reveals a lot of the plot, and is considered spoilers. Suffice it to say, it dissects roughly 9 directions the movie makes you weave in and out of to finally get a grasp of what this movie's really about.)Mommy (Bradley) and son (Bruton) not only have to keep on moving from town to dump, they have to arrange demonic symbols to ward off...something. Meanwhile, a hunter needs permission to, well, hunt the boy. Meanwhile, a beast is lurking in the shadows snatching women at night. Meanwhile, Mommy's paranoid and wards off anyone asking questions while trying to get her son to be gay. (Okay, not really true, but close enough.) Meanwhile, a gang terrorizes a neighbor and soon-to-be girlfriend of the Fergal, the son. Meanwhile, she's having a heavy burden of taking care of her "slow" brother and demanding mother. Meanwhile, there's another hunter who talks with the dead and disagrees with the traveling hunter. Meanwhile, more and more is revealed about Mommy's past. Meanwhile, Fergal's horny and that's not a good thing…While the movie's all over the place, it was still worth a shot to see. The acting's pretty good and the cinematography is decent – when it's bright out, that is. But, after you get past all those "meanwhiles" (or subplots, some of which I probably overlooked) you will finally get the conclusion that (REALLY DOESN'T – I'm still confused) sorta explains it all.

First off, I don't understand why some people were so critical of this film. Having watched countless terrible so called movies from the horror genre this last year, very few could hold my attention. Yes, I will agree, it started of a wee bit slow, and yes at times you didn't know who to like more, the hunters or the hunted. Personally I thought this was quite refreshing. The setting was wonderful for an ex-pat Scot like myself, it's a pity more movies aren't made in Scotland. Of course there are parallels with Let me in, but the whole gypsy/druidic slant was nice and the acting on the whole was more than adequate and a lot better than low budget American movies where recently the actors seem to be hitting all time new lows in believability or likability. I thought this film kept my interest right up to the end, the ending wasn't as predictable as people make out, as the director really did paint quite a ambiguous slant to the main protagonist (or was that protagonists?). Anyway, for all fans of Edinburgh and people who want more from a horror movie than just another slasher psycho you should come away with few disappointments. Serious thrills are few, so I might well put this more in a supernatural category rather than horror. I think the problem with recent horror is it's hard to top the excesses of Saw and few have the storytelling genius of a director like Guillermo Del Toro to eke out a superb horror without an excess of gore. To sum up, a good attempt at a Scottish LET ME IN, not incredible but compared with recent dross a must see for horror fans who are waiting in vain for another great film like The Shining.

Where to begin? Not only is that the question I have as a reviewer, it seems that was the question the director was asking himself for the first 20 minutes of this film. To call this film slow to start is an epic understatement. It uncomfortably squeezes it's way into a story arc, but never really doing so with a pace that keeps the viewers attention. After an extended wait we are introduced to our main characters, unlikeable as they basically all are.The main character, although honestly the film barely commits to it, is Petronella. A girl from some kind of mixed race background, who, for want of a better word, is seemingly "easy". She meets the second character, this time from a gypsy family, Fergal. What follows is an incredulously quick, and exceptionally unbelievably whirlwind romance, wherein Petronella falls madly in love for no real discernible reason, and winds up trying to have sex with him repeatedly. However, Fergal's highly creepy voodoo style mother is obsessed with keeping him from doing the deed, so forces him to stay in his room. He gets out all the time though, but only when she's not around.If this review seems disjointed, please, understand that this is what the film is like. You are introduced to characters whom you almost immediately share no compassion for, and are then forced to watch them form relationships that have no serious grounding. All under the story arc of Fergal being hunted by a random man, for undisclosed reasons. If it wasn't bad enough that the actress playing Petronella (Hanna Stanbridge) is indubitably too old to play a schoolgirl, then it's certainly bad enough that the gypsy magic sequences play out like a scene from Hackers. One party uses some ancient act by no doubt killing some form of animal, the other does the same to "block" this power. Who knew gypsy magic could be hacked? Seriously, I won't even delve any further into this shoddy material. It was a waste of film, and left only one temptation at the end, that of leaving as soon as humanly possible. Grotesquely over done sex scenes, silly cast choices, absolutely diabolical dialogue. Even the chavs in the film are blatantly acting school graduates with Kappa tracksuits on. I wish this was better, as I often enjoy James Nesbitt, but he was wasted with a character barely given room to grow. Simply put, avoid, at all costs.