Review: There’s Nothing Out There (1991)
Directed by: Rolfe Kanefsky
Starring: Craig Peck, Wendy Bednarz, Mark Collver
Written by: Rolfe Kanefsky
Music by: Christopher Thomas
Country: United States
Available on: Blu-ray (Vinegar Syndrome)
IMDb
Rolfe Kanefsky wrote There’s Nothing Out There — a horror comedy about some college kids vacationing and getting naked in the woods who end up on the run from a toothy mollusk-like alien horny for human women — over the course of five days when he was 18. He directed it when he was 20. So, that’s pretty impressive. Many young adults don’t have that level of dedication to bikini-clad peril and crude mangled stingray monstrosities. But the problem with that is There’s Nothing Out There definitely seems written and directed by a 20-year-old kid.
It’s apparent that our boy Kanefsky has a lot of enthusiasm, though. The movie has the same exuberance of something like Evil Dead (1981) and obviously Sam Raimi was an influence, from the flash of the Evil Dead VHS box during the opening sequence in a video store to the monster POV shots and slapstick physical comedy scattered throughout. There’s a lot of experimentation with the camera here, including a lot of amusing match cuts. Not all of it works, but it’s a welcome flourish that helps overcome some of the film’s other problems, like dull, grating characters and a repetitive plot that sees the same crappy kids traversing the same areas with the same “oh shit, the tentacled slime monster almost touched my crotch” moments. Kanefsky’s intends to skewer horror movies and includes a very proto-Randy-from-Scream character who uses his obsession with the genre to ostensibly help defeat the alien. Except that he doesn’t, really. He’s just as clueless-slash-helpless as everyone else, but he talks a lot more.
Fun stuff pops up sometimes, such as a goofy-ass battle between alpha males at the speed but definitely not the grace of underwater ballet and a skull-melting scene that hints at what carnal glee this movie could have harnessed with more resources or experience or maybe talent. There’s plenty of exorbitant nudity and eye-laser blasts to stimulate the senses, but a painful dearth of comedy or story. The middle of the film often drifts to “how long have I been watching this?” territory. The alien, looking like a rubber Roomba slathered in aloe vera gook, isn’t especially well-crafted and it’s on screen a lot, giving you plenty of opportunity to scrutinize its robust silliness.
There’s Nothing Out There is an example of DIY horror that’s just too well made by folks of too sound a mind. Once you’re in that territory, it’s exceedingly difficult to make something weird enough or good enough to sear itself into memory banks already stuffed with excessively mediocre content.
Overall rating: 4 out of 10
