The outsider

Year of release : 2020

 

Run time : 51min - 1h , 10 episodes

 

Genre : Horror / Thriller / Mystery / Series / Mini Series

 

Cast : Ben Mendelsohn, Jason Bateman

 

 

The series are based on the 2018 novel by Stephen King,of the same name.

 

The series open with a man who is walking his dog,finding the body of a boy who was r@ped and murdered in the most atrocious way.

Interviewing witnesses, the detectives come to the conclusion the perpetrator is an outstanding member of the society, Terry Maitland, a coach.

The main detective decides to take the coach while he is at the game for everyone to know what he's done.

Terry has no idea what they're talking about, as he was out of town on the day of the murder, and his lawyer's PI finds footage of him at a convention.

 

At the same time, everything points to him, as the police have footage of him too, taken by surveillance cameras, and his fingerprints are everywhere on the murder scene. It seems he tried very hard to be  caught,to be seen by as many people as possible, talking to some, and by as many surveillance cameras. Or that someone tried very hard to make sure everyone would think him guilty.

 

At the same time, Terry's little girl says she talks to a man at night, but her mother thinks she has nightmares.

 

Although all evidence points to the coach, at the same time, we have all this evidence that he wasn't anywhere near the murder scene, and he might have been set up. Regardless, he is imprisoned, and treated like a criminal.

 

The family of the little boy dies,one by one, as the teenage son k!lls two cops and injures another, in an attempt to k!ll Terry, which he does.

It feels an entity created all this pain and sufferance ,destroying lives by k!lling the kid, as one family is completely gone, while the other's lives are destroyed by the accusation,the father being dead too,to feed off the energy of all this grief.

 

The main detective,Ralph Anderson, with Terry's lawyer, start thinking there's more than meets the eye, and hire a PI with special abilities.

 

The PI, Holly Gibney, finds out the nurse Terry said, bumped into, who scratched him,when falling down, had the exact same thing happening to him, and k!lled himself in jail. She then finds out the woman the nurse met had the exact same thing happening to her, and was now in jail.

 

The woman tells her she thinks the one doing this is El Cuco, a malevolent entity, known as the Boogeyman in English, who eats children, and lingers after the deed, to feast on the pain and grief of the relatives.

Her story is backed up by a woman who was visiting the prison at the same time, who didn't know the woman who was set up just like our man,Terry.

 

Our PI ,Holly, is definitely on the right track, as we see everything she discovers is right on point, but she has problems with the detective, Ralph, and with the widow and lawyer of Terry,the ones you'd think would be on her side!

 

This creature is trying to stop them from discovering it, as it starts threatening everyone to drop the investigation,when it's not making them see things, as it leads closer and closer to it,and even gets a minion,it controls, to do things for it.

 

Ralph is a disbeliever, in fact,I've never seen such a disbelieving lead, with all the evidence thrown at him, all the things happening to people around him, including his wife, all of them talking about this entity, describing it, and looking exactly the same ( people who don't know each other, and didn't talk to each other),and he just keeps this to himself, damaging the end results,while calling people crazy!

 

Terry's widow is another gem, who instead of hanging on to people's words, trying to clear his name, she starts believing he might have done it, although she has all this evidence he didn't, just like all the others who were framed, and were apparently,on video and not only,according to their families, in two places at the same time!

 

The title of the series comes from something Holly says towards the end, "an outsider knows an outsider".

 

The first two episodes are directed by Jason Bateman who is also the executive producer (so I guess one could say these series are his baby), and he did a great job, I loved the angles, the way he directed the filming of everything.

 

The actors were flawless, especially Jason Bateman,who had to play two different characters, and Cynthia Erivo, who played a private investigator with abilities, Julianne Nicholson who played the widow ( I think she might have played in another Stephen King adaptation,Storm of the century,when she was younger) , and Marc Menchaca, who played the minion .

 

The soundtrack blends in perfectly with the images,creating an incredible vibe and atmosphere to the movie. It's a dark movie, but the way it was shot, combined with the perfect music, makes you wanna keep watching, because it pulls you in, you feel like you are there, with the characters, emerged in the story (just like when you're reading a book). It's like you see and feel what the characters are thinking, seeing, go through.

 

The visual effects were great.

 

The series are an HBO production and can be found on the HBO channels,like on HBO Max, and other streaming sites like Amazon, AppleTv, Hulu.

 

Rating : The stuff dreams are made of !