The following content is part of the manuscript of the video commentary. The original video was originally posted on station B and Weibo account: Li Lixi on March 11, 2020. Original article, please indicate the original author for reprinting.
Original video link
Before the finale, what "The Outsider" has rendered has always been a vague, nuanced, and at the same time obscure horror.
In the play, the old Yi of GBI once said: Dreams convey information. The private detective also said to Ralph: I was lost in the forest when I was a child, and I heard someone calling his name. Ralph himself also happened to hear the same tune twice in the most special time period. Everyone has met or heard of such excessive coincidences or details that are difficult to explain. "The Outsider" quietly throws out hints to some inexplicable small phenomena in our daily lives.
Human cognition is limited. Things that cannot be explained do not mean that it is really terrible, but we just don't understand it yet. At present, the scientific community generally believes that the universe has 11 dimensions, and what we are in is only a 3-dimensional world. As for the appearance of 4567891011 dimensions, none of us have seen it. As mentioned in "Three Body": Who knows whether the mathematical rules and physical rules we currently master are really universal rules in this universe? Who knows how unreliable our cognitive basis for looking at the world is?
Therefore, as long as we can clearly recognize our own cognitive limitations, the emergence of all unknowable phenomena can be regarded as a reminder, allowing us to take the opportunity to find new room for improvement.
Therefore, one of the biggest themes of "The Outsider" is: how our beliefs will shape our lives. How should we use a rational attitude to accept those irrational and unnatural events?
What would you do if someone told you that the devil really existed?
In the play, Hao Li, who was originally incompatible with a normal personality, naturally accepted this fact with a tolerant mentality.
The positions of Jenny, Lao Yi, and private detectives are more neutral. They have their own learning curve and will adjust their ideas based on the evidence before them, so they gradually accept the possibility of the existence of the devil.
As for the coach’s wife and Ralph, both are stubborn and both have a strong emotional burden. Asking them to believe in the existence of demons is almost the same as killing them. The coach’s wife would immediately start to doubt her husband’s innocence after hearing Haoli said that there was a devil. Because her reason told him that even if the husband is a murderer, the possibility of a murderer is greater than the possibility of a demon.
And Ralph, like a stubborn donkey, insisted on using his inherent logic as a policeman to refute the unreasonable evidence before him, and tried to find an explanation in his own way. It wasn't until the end that he understood that the existence of the devil did not conflict with the science and reality he knew. Even the demons are only part of science and reality.
In this way, "The Outsider" is not a horror movie. It is more like a psychological thriller and a psychological education film.
Director Jason Bateman also said in an interview:
The story of "The Outsider" is not the supernatural element in it that attracts me the most, but people's views on things that are incomprehensible. I don't want to scare the audience, I just want to create an emotion.
"The Outsider" is really very successful in rendering the mood and atmosphere. It points out the coincidences and details that everyone can see in daily life, reflects the dark corners hidden behind civilization, and caters to the skeptics' speculations about the world with numerous "thinking and fear". All kinds of illusions that seem to be true and false have blurred the boundary between rationality and madness a little bit. Each character seems to be trapped in an unanswered nightmare. Everyone's state in the nightmare has also been drawn out in detail through elongated shots.
The demon El Cuco mentioned in the play, I have introduced its prototype background in the storytelling of episodes 4-6, so I won’t repeat it here. The appearance of the devil evoked a primitive fear. This is a kind of fear that can connect the fear in the subconscious with the fear in reality. It is also a kind of fear that can be related to the entire judicial system and social system. After seeing the cruel abuse and killing of children, the people's irrational crazy sense of justice, blind hatred of the coach’s wife, and the extreme retaliation of the victim’s family without thinking about it...Although it can be regarded as having a cause, it also makes people shudder. In order for the devil to have an impact on individuals in the real society, he needs to work hard to get close to his goals, find ways to obtain the DNA of the other party, and then cultivate and evolve for 20 days; but for the society as a whole, there is only one rumor and one story. Misunderstandings can cause a large number of people's positions to collapse in the same direction, like dominoes. All these chaotic farce is an enlargement of the demons in people's hearts.
However, the irony of social systems and cultural news is not the most important theme in "The Outsider" after all. What "The Outsider" wants to do is to explore the ubiquitous subtle fears from the details, and try to make this fear believable. The scenes of the series are very good, with a variety of "tricky" shooting angles, showing a peeping perspective, as if the devil has been lurking in the dark, peeping at every move of people. The devil may not know why it exists, but it is secretly spreading tragedy, instinctively eating human flesh and drinking human blood. The more unlucky and sad you are, the more excited and satisfied it is. It just lurks in the dark and does evil, and only occasionally exposes its whereabouts for thousands or hundreds of years, giving people a chance to fight it.
In short, "The Outsider" is a well-made work. But in fact, it also has obvious flaws. The first is: the pace is too slow. In fact, the slow pace is not a bad thing. If you can watch the show in one go, it's fine, but if you wait for it to be updated once a week, the viewing experience will be worse. The first and second episodes are okay, with a relatively large amount of information, which firmly sets the story frame and emotional tone for the subsequent plot. Both episodes were directed by actor Jason Bateman, who played the coach. In 2019, Jason Bateman won the 71st Emmy Award for Best Director in the Drama category for the single episode of "Reparations" in "Ozark" (Ozark). He also obviously brought the dark style of "Ozark" to "The Outsider".
However, since the third episode, the episode did not promote too much plot, but began to emphasize the atmosphere and deepen the shadow. Although the look and feel of the picture is great, it feels dull on the whole. To put it in an exaggeration, episodes 3-8 are a bit like fillers whose main role is to kill time. Moreover, almost every episode has similar flashbacks and interludes. After these techniques were overused, the sense of mystery was weakened. Moreover, the level of performance of different dramas is not stable, and the distribution of narrative rhythm is not even. When I see the middle, it feels like the main creative team has completely changed.
Furthermore, as a combination of detective and supernatural themes, "The Outsider" itself is relatively weak in reasoning. Many of Holly’s reasoning processes are not convincing, and conclusions come quickly, but the logic behind it is not strong enough.
Also, when I was recommended to watch "The Outsider", many friends said that this show is claimed to be the real successor to the first season of "True Detective". Therefore, I also watched it with the anticipation of "True Detective". But after watching it, to be honest, although I think "The Outsider" is very good, I still think it is far from the first season of "True Detective". In the first season of "True Detective", it really excavated the deep-seated criminal motives of human beings, and it also has a cross-dimensional metaphor for supernatural phenomena. However, the theme of "The Outsider" is lighter and smoother. The expression of suspense is not strong, and many metaphors are not deep.
However, in spite of this, the finale, which was thoughtful and terrifying, suddenly changed the story of "The Outsider". The story of the second season is still worth looking forward to.
Finally, let's compare the difference between the original novel and the series of "The Outsider".
Richard Price, the producer of "The Outsider," once said: What I want to do is to expand the two-dimensional description in the original book into a three-dimensional picture. At this point, the "The Outsider" episode is absolutely successful. The whole drama looks really like a dynamic novel. The series of revisions to some of the details in the original novel is also very good.
For example, as mentioned before, Ralph's son did not die in the novel, but he has already died in the episode. This provides a more adequate psychological motivation for Ralph's impulse to catch the coach in public. At the same time, Ralph, who was suffering from the loss of his son, also deepened the emotional sadness of the drama. However, this kind of sadness is not decadent, nor does it give people a sense of world weariness, but reveals stubbornness and perseverance. Perhaps it is precisely because Ralph is tenacious enough that the demon who likes to enjoy sorrow dare not approach him directly, but only dare to start from the people next to him. Correspondingly, the devil also has this mentality of avoiding the stubborn coach's wife.
For another example, the adaptation of Hao Li was also very successful. The novel has a total of more than 600 pages of content, and Holly did not appear until 300 pages. But in the episode, Holly’s appearance was much earlier. As I have already introduced in the 1-3 episodes of the commentary video, the role of Holly appeared more than once in the work of the original author of "The Outsider", Stephan King. And Holly in the drama version of "The Outsider" is definitely more avant-garde and more individual than Holly in "Mr. Mercedes". Stephan King himself likes Holi very much, and he plans to continue to write new stories for Holi.
In addition, the series also did other free treatments for the plot in the novel. In the commentary of episodes 1-3, I mentioned some differences between novels and episodes. Here are a few simple inventory:
1. In the novel, Big Nose and Ralph have a personal feud. The big nose in the drama is more humane and is portrayed as a direct victim of the devil.
2. The bodyguard in the novel did not go into the cave and shoot at the devil, and Ralph did not personally smash the devil's head. The demon was actually defeated by Holly with a specific weapon.
3. The role of Andy does not exist in the novel.
4. Ralph in the novel is tall, but Ralph in the series is not that tall. The temperament is more refined.
5. In the episode, Holly never takes an airplane, only travels by land. But in the novel, Holly can fly normally.
In short, the first season of "The Outsider" is here. The score of this show is 81% freshness of Rotten Tomatoes and 90% of the audience rating. I personally think that the recommendation index is slightly higher than the average.
The above content is the manuscript of the video commentary. The original video was originally posted on station B and Weibo account: Li Lixi on March 11, 2020. Original article, please indicate the original author for reprinting.
Original video link
View more about The Outsider reviews
