STACK December 2016 Issue No. 146

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36 DECEMBER 2016
DVD&BD
FEATURE
Based on the comic books by Robert Kirkman, Outcast
isn’t your average exorcism series, as Scott Hocking
discovered at San Diego Comic-Con.
Ayoung boy stares intently at
a cockroach crawling on his
bedroom wall before violently
head-butting it to a pulp, which he
then hungrily slurps up.
This unsettling opening scene
sets the tone for Outcast, the latest
television adaptation of a Robert
Kirkman comic book series. Kirkman
is famous for creating The Walking
Dead but it’s wrong to approach
Outcast expecting a similar scenario
with demons instead of zombies.
This isn’t that kind of show. What
it does have in common with TWD
is its focus on a tight knit group of
characters and how they react when
faced with horrific situations and
moral dilemmas.
The community of Rome, West
Virginia, confronts demons both
personal and literal, especially Kyle
Barnes (Patrick Fugit), who has
been battling them from childhood
when he witnessed the nightmarish
possession of his mother.
Shadowed by dark forces throughout
his life, which have separated him
from his wife and daughter, Kyle is
the outcast of the title.
“I think Kyle has built up an
armour over the years,” says Fugit.
“He suffered some heavy trauma
when he was young, and part of
his redemption through that whole
process was finding his wife and
having a child. And then that’s
also been torn away from him,
so I think that the ghosts of the
past are what haunt him the most.
What’s happening now triggers
the memories, and those have to
do with what he wants in life and
where he wants to be, rather than
where he is now.”
“This is a world where there
are a lot of things going on behind
closed doors,” explains Kirkman.
“One of the things I find most
interesting is that you can be in this
hellish world in a dark room, and
then step to the other side of the
wall and take a break from it. It’s
not like The Walking Dead where
it’s an all-encompassing thing, and
to have that in a small town where
everyone is so intimately involved
in everyone’s lives… it adds a cool
atmosphere to the overall story.”
Kirkman acknowledges the
influence of The Exorcist and its
position as “the high watermark of
the exorcism genre”, but stresses
that Outcast follows a different path
to the classic film and its spin-off
TV series.
“While I do say that this is
an exorcism show, I think from
minute one you’ll see how
different it is from The Exorcist. It’s
offering a completely different kind
of experience… we’re trying to
subvert everything done in
The Exorcist.
“There’s no
Catholicism in
this show,” he
continues. “I just felt
that most exorcism stories deal
with Catholicism and it’s a very
structured, regimented process.
There are all those things you see
in other movies, like the Vatican’s
involvement, and that just doesn’t
interest me – we’ve seen all that
stuff before.
“There is an amazing tradition
of Baptist exorcisms in the south,
which is what I wanted to explore.
It’s more messy with a lot more
on-the-spot creativity, so I
wanted to bring that to the
screen and give this show a
different flavor from all those
other exorcism stories.”
• Outcast:
Season 1
is out Dec 7
THE LAST EXORCISM
Blair Witch meets The
Exorcist in this found-
footage shocker. All
hell breaks loose in
rural Louisiana when
a sceptical priest
and a documentary film
crew investigate the demonic
possession of a teenage girl.
ANGEL HEART
At the request of the
mysterious Louis
Cyphre, gumshoe
Harry Angel tracks a
missing crooner to New
Orleans, where he discovers the
devil in the details. Alan Parker’s
sweaty and sinister thriller is a
masterpiece of Southern gothic.
TRUE DETECTIVE
In the first (and best) season
of the HBO anthology
series, a pair of
homicide detectives
hunt a serial killer
with a penchant for the
occult and ritual murder
through the swampy backwoods
of Louisiana.
THE BEYOND
Lucio Fulci’s ‘80s
splatter classic
involves a young
woman who discovers
the Louisiana hotel she’s
inherited is built over one of the
seven dreaded gateways to Hell.
That would explain why the place
is crawling with zombies.
EVIL
DOWN
SOUTH
This is a world where there are a lot of things
going on behind closed doors