The Outside (2022)

What filmmaker can make references to The Stuff, Annihilation, Stepford Wives, and Repoman in one feature and make it all fit together perfectly? Ana Lily Amirpour is the answer. One of Amipour’s strengths is filling her movies with loveable weirdos and The Outside is no different. The Outside is a feature that asks the question, What if someone truly believed that the beauty infomercials were right and their products could change your life? Her protagonist is a lonely woman named Stacey (Kate Micucci), who believes something is wrong with her because the other women at her bank job don’t like her. She just doesn’t fit in. So when the Alo Glo Man (Dan Stevens) begins talking to her through the TV about how Alo Glo will change her life, she listens. What ensues is an uncomfortable, itchy, and quirky body horror tale that plays on our anxieties about fitting in, and how companies prey on those anxieties to make us spend money. Micucci and Stevens are a blast to watch, and Martin Starr plays one of the sweetest most devoted husbands I have seen on screen in some time. Amirpour is an talented filmmaker and her use of colors, shots, and fishtank lenses enhance the discomfiting aspects of this feature. The Outside is fun, sweet, and above all strange. But make sure to moisturize before clicking play. 4 out of 5 sacs of blood.

—Tori Potenza

At the cleanup spot in Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities, episode 4 is a highlight, for all the fantastic character details and filmic verve Tori mentions. It also sticks out because of the title, which sits a little askew on the piece, but really works when you let it sink in.

The scene where Stacey is invited to the lady party so they can marginalize her, and she whips out the giant box with a duck she’s so lovingly taxidermied is, like, exquisite. We feel all of her earnestness and awkwardness, and she seems so close to accepting herself and being the wonderful weirdo she is. But that almost is tragically far away from the self-confidence that would protect her from the casual cruelty of others, the ambient pressure of the gender nightmare, and the meta-con of Alo Glo Man. That’s the outside where she lives: outside privileged social circles, sure, but also outside gender normativity, outside herself, and outside her life. (And another outside is the strange, emollient universe that takes hold of her via Alo Glo Man and his otherworldly pitch.) The early scenes, before the lotion starts breaking Stacey down, present a person who is at home in her life and has created a space to live her way, with another person who gets her and adores her. We also see the seeds of her discontent: she knows the world at large is hostile to her way of being, and her flaw is that she cares about that—even though it shouldn’t be a character flaw to care that the world is fucked up beyond repair. And just as the lotion fixes her in the worst way, she fixes her life in a way that keeps things as they are. Her delirious mugging at the end, where we get to celebrate Kate Micucci’s incredible face and all she can do with it, is no less tragic for how hilarious it is. We’re outside now, and she’s stuck inside. 4.5 out of 5 sacs of blood.

—J †Johnson