To me, this movie is perfection.

Such a frustrating disappointment

Powerful

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

My Dad is a massive fan of werewolf movies . My own opinion is that you've seen one werewolf movie you've seen them all and they're very formulaic . So when my Dad gave me this DVD it could only mean one thing - a werewolf movie so bad my Dad had no inclination to watch it again . Never a gift horse in the mouth I did console myself looking on the DVD backcover to find it was directed by Colm McCarthy who made the recent hit THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS and who is in my mind a director to keep an eye on Certainly McCarthy knows how to bring a bleak and brutal background to a visual story . OUTCAST is set on the council schemes of Edinburgh and filmed in such a way this Edinburgh is the anti-thesis seen in the festival brochures . It doesn't feel like the Edinburgh I know and love and this is in no way a criticism . Mood is everything and compared to this film TRAINSPOTTING is LA LA LAND The underlying problem is that there's little beyond OUTCAST apart from its oppressive atmosphere . The story itself is often confusing and the narrative feels better suited to a Western where two tough gringos ride in to town looking for a runaway . When James Nesbitt character walks in to a bar I kept expecting someone to ask for soda-pop . There's not a lot in the way of werewolves either and the belated effects are faintly ridiculous which tend to bring the entire film down and makes for a painfully uneven movie

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.

The defining feature of Outcast is its combination of supernatural horror with gritty social realism. It's fairly routine genre story operates within the backdrop of a deprived Edinburgh scheme. It's this combination that gives the film its one sense of originality. The seamier side of Edinburgh has been depicted before in films such as Trainspotting or The Acid House of course, but these rundown parts of the town have never to my knowledge been incorporated into a horror movie.The story is basically about an Irish mother and son who move into this deprived estate. While a couple of mysterious 'hunters' appear to be on their trail. In addition, a local girl begins a relationship with the boy, much to his mother's disapproval.Overall, this is a decent effort but no more. The setting is different - albeit very depressing – and provides the film with its strongest element. One of the main problems though is with the characters. None are particularly engaging; while the central love story is hugely unconvincing. This latter aspect really damaged the film, as the two leads really had no chemistry between them at all. On the other hand, the local neds were quite convincingly played but weren't integrated into the plot in a very interesting way unfortunately. So things ultimately boil down to the supernatural narrative which isn't overly interesting but serviceable enough. The film does have some gory set-pieces, and these are achieved via CGI which isn't especially great, although the monster is OK. Admittedly there are a few original little moments, such as the scene in the morgue but generally speaking there isn't anything especially new here besides the kitchen-sink setting.

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.