The found-footage genre can be catnip to young filmmakers, embracing as it does a low-budget aesthetic and the kind of incoherent crashing-about that even the most unseasoned actors can manage. There’s nothing green, though, about Robbie Banfitch, the director (as well as writer, editor, cinematographer and sound designer) of “The Outwaters,” a movie that lavishes as much attention on its setup as its payoff.
Those early images, as four friends (played by Banfitch, Scott Schamell, Michelle May and Angela Basolis) prepare to film a music video in the Mojave Desert, have a woozy beauty that’s sneakily soothing. From the start, the desert is an alien presence, captured in inverted shots and unexpected close-ups as Banfitch thrusts his camera into thorned bushes and cracked earth. The light is blinding, the vistas so vast they magnify the friends’ vulnerability. In this eerie moonscape, the lingering sight of a barefoot young woman posing for the camera, hair and dress wind-whipped around her, has an aching poignancy.
Culled from three memory cards found after the friends disappeared, “The Outwaters” conjures a swoony, dreamlike atmosphere that heightens the shocks to come. The camera swings and dips, the air shimmers and someone notices a strange vibration in the earth, a sense of something stirring far below their feet. Seemingly casual remarks — about a strange ball of light, or the long tail of an acid trip — return to haunt us as we try to make sense of the eventual slaughter.
Backed by a sound design that expertly combines the naturalistic with the otherworldly, “The Outwaters” builds to a truly disconcerting sequence as Robbie wanders alone, wounded and gibbering. He doesn’t know who he is, but the audience might.
The Outwaters
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. In theaters.
