Hes Out There Review

The great thing about slasher movies is the premise doesn’t have to be original to make it a good flick, as long as you have all the essentials. A really creepy looking psychopath, preferably with a scary mask, some really awesome and realistic gore effects like a decapitation or eye gouging, and nail-biting moments of anticipation and terror where you don’t know if the killer is outside the house or right behind the protagonist, hiding in the closet. This film hit all the right marks for a great slasher movie, and it even manages to throw some original ideas in the mix. My only issue was maybe they could have tried a little harder to stray away from certain horror movie cliches.

He’s Out There (2018) is a horror movie directed by Quinn Lasher and written by Mike Scannell. It stars Yvonne Strahovski, Anna Pniowsky and Abigail Pniowsky. Laura (Strahovski) and her family decide to take a trip to their lakehouse. She and her daughters leave first, while her husband stays behind for business and plans to meet them later that evening. When Laura and the girls arrive, strange things start happening, and soon they are being stalked by an axe wielding maniac.

One of the creepiest things I have seen in a horror movie in a while was the cupcake scene. What made this scene so disturbing for me was the pure innocence of the little girl just wanting to enjoy a delicious cupcake, and the darkness of what the psychopath has hidden in the center that the girl ends up ingesting. It makes me want to gag just thinking about it, and that to me is horror movie success.

My only gripe with this film is the cliche toward the beginning of the movie that they could have done better. When Laura and her daughters show up at the cabin they can’t get the padlock off the front gate, so the stereotypical neighbor that just happened to be nearby gave them a hand opening the gate, and of course, shares with them a story about a missing boy that used to live in their lakehouse. And of course, you see this individual one more time later in the movie, just so you can rule him out as the killer when he gets an axe to the head.

This is definitely a creepy horror movie and I would recommend it to any fan of the genre.

Don’t expect a whole lot of new ideas, but you will most likely get the creeps and enjoy this for the disturbing ride it is.

7/10

• He's Out There had a worldwide gross of 544,674 dollars.
• This film was released on October 16, 2018. It was produced by Screen Gems and distributed by Vertical Entertainment.
• The film was shot in Canada.
• Originally titled "Scarecrow", the script was featured in the 2014 Blood List, which lists the year's unproduced most-liked dark screenplays.
• The hotel they stayed at while in production was empty at first. A crew member was the only person in the hotel for the first weekend.