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Rating: The Outsider is a mini TV series based on the book of the same name by Stephen King.
That said, let's get straight to the heart of the matter: did you expect something more? I didn't, for all ten episodes it seemed to me I was seeing the imprint of dear old Stefanuzzo, the author who transforms even the obvious into gold! A logical paranormal journey that cleverly merges with what is most in vogue at the moment, namely that crime style we can't get enough of. Do we have blood? Yes! Detectives and private investigators who have to deal with both their inner demons and... I don't want to spoil anything! Anyway, we have those too. What’s missing? Perhaps a more unsettling cinematography would have helped, although it was good, I would have preferred something more vintage, that imperfect style that provokes an unspeakable amount of emotional discomfort intended to turn the viewer, gosh darn it, into the film critic they are not but would like to be.
But enough rambling, I want to talk a bit about the characters. There's this detective, named Ralph Anderson, who, following the gruesome discovery of a child's body, starts investigating the painful aftermath of a previous, non-violent death of his son. It happens that the man’s suffering psychological component negatively influences the successful outcome of the investigations. Let's say he makes a "huge mess" and thus finds himself having to contain a deluge of crap through non-conventional methods, and to do so, it will take virtually all ten episodes and, of course, not alone.
Among the characters, we obviously have a presumed culprit, his family, a gutsy defense lawyer, a private investigator used to unconventional professional manners and then there is THE Character: Holly Gibney, another private investigator with particular traits who unintentionally becomes the focal point of the story. What does Holly do? She digs and scrapes well into the "evidence", quite misleading, and meticulously aims at solving a case that is NOT UNIQUE. A chain of events is discovered that roots in the purest and most essential form of evil: pain as a source of nourishment and other people's fear as a regenerating force of evil.
Everything comes together as if we were watching a boxing match where, on one side, there is the logical that does not want to surrender to the challenger, and on the other side, there is the one who finds no answers either but has decided to base his attack on "if I don't understand what's going on then I’ll put back into play everything I don’t believe in."
Thus begins the recognition of the true Stephen King and finally, we make peace with ourselves, stop playing detective with the remote control in hand: he decides, period, there is no DNA evidence, no scientific autopsy, and forget about the typical places of a "comfortable" investigation.
Would I recommend it? How should I know? If you've read the book maybe you can do without it, but let's say it’s not the TV series you curse after seeing. It flows well, the characters are captivating, Stefanuzzo is there and if you like them, there are the usual forests fertilized with American corpses!
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