Directed by Colm McCarthy. Starring Niall Bruton, Hanna Stanbridge, James Nesbitt, Kate Dickie, Ciarán McMenamin, James Cosmo. Horror, UK, 94m, cert 18.

Released in UK on DVD by Momentum Pictures on 17th January 2011, £12.99.

Mary (Kate Dickie) and son Fergal (Niall Bruton) are Irish travellers who take up residence on a grim Edinburgh housing estate. After moving into a vacant flat Mary covers the walls with pagan runes, initially this hides them from the attentions of social services, but soon it appears there is a more serious need for the pair to try and erase the traces of their habitation as mother and son are being hunted by Cathal (James Nesbitt) who is also using magic to trace them. Mary’s plan to hide in plain sight is complicated when Fergal falls for a local girl Petronella (Hanna Stanbridge). The teenager’s relationship creates ripples and tensions that may help Cathal in his “hunt”.

McCarthy’s debut feature (he has a strong track record as a director of British television drama) is an ambitious attempt to marry the current trend of social realism in British horror with mystical pagan and supernatural elements. This clash of elements is also reflected in the film’s style mixing the gritty and realistic modes of directors such as Andrea Arnold (RED ROAD, FISHTANK) and Lynne Ramsay (RATCATCHER) with the supernatural and the monstrous.

The chief attractions of OUTCAST’s impressive cast are Nesbitt and Dickie who put a heart and soul into their characters that is sadly absent in the more generic teenage romance taking centre stage. This is not really the fault of the less experienced actors who are not served with material as meaty by the film’s script. Nesbitt’s skill as an actor has been somewhat obscured by his ubiquity on British TV screens; Cathal is a sinister character, often violent and with dark motives. Dickie brings the same cold steeliness to her fiercely maternal character that she showed in her outstanding performance in surveillance drama RED ROAD. Genuinely she is one of our island’s most underrated actors. The eventual confrontation between Mary and Cathal and the revelation of the nature of their relationship is the film’s most successful scene, and worth the price of admission alone.

OUTCAST stands out from other recent British genre offerings such as EDEN LAKE not just because of its supernatural elements, but also by being a film that is firmly about outsiders. Its characters are Irish Travellers and what tabloids would term “dole scum”, but they are not shown in as conforming to venal and villainous stereotypes that would please readers of the Daily Mail. There is also a strong sexual element to the story, both in the tentative relationship between Fergal and Petronella (an irritating choice of character name that can’t fail to prompt unfortunate sniggers) but especially in the sexual presentation of magic. This element of the film invokes comparison to Clive Barker’s fiction, especially his short story THE FORBIDDEN (memorably filmed by Bernard Rose as CANDYMAN, a modern classic of the genre in this writer’s opinion).

It’s a heady witches’ brew and one that while not entirely successful is certainly an interesting and distinctive work from a director to watch.

Stuart Barr.

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