Dark Bloody Horror Series The Perfect Adaptation Of A Genre Master

Cherokee City Detective Ralph Anderson (Ben Mendelsohn), still grieving the loss of his only child, is stuck with an impossible case in The Outsider. When the corpse of the horrifically mutilated young boy Frank Peterson is found in the woods, all the evidence points to little league coach Terry Maitland (Jason Bateman).

But shortly after Ralph goes out of his way to make a public spectacle of Terry’s arrest, the detective is faced with a baffling paradox—there is enough evidence to definitively prove Terry must be the killer, and there is enough evidence to prove Terry could not possibly be the killer.

Soon The Outsider‘s investigation goes far beyond Cherokee City, with Ralph and a small band of allies recruiting the recurring King character, private investigator Holly Gibney (Cynthia Erivo). Traveling all over the country, Holly eventually returns to Ralph with an explanation few are willing to accept—whoever murdered Frank Peterson has been doing it for a long time, and they’re not of this world.

The only name she has for the killer is El Cuco—pulled from Spanish and Portugese myths of a monstrous eater of children.

Ralph, his wife, and the other heroes of The Outsider are split on whether Holly is nuts or not. While they wrestle with their beliefs, El Cuco prepares to kill again and a servant of his has infiltrated the heroes’ ranks.

Mendelsohn is perfect as The Outsider‘s tortured lead as is Erivo as the savant Holly, the most fascinating character in the miniseries. Holly shows clear signs of living on the autism spectrum, initially leaving you with the impression that she’s socially awkward and can’t read cues.

Really, she’s not awkward at all and seems to read social cues just fine, but simply doesn’t necessarily care about ignoring them if she believes it’s what’s right.

The Outsider is blessed with a group of talented character actors. Fans of Edgar Wright’s Cornetto Trilogy should recognize Paddy Considine as the noble strip club bouncer Claude, those familiar with House of Cards will have a bell ring when they meet Derek Cecil as the security guard Andy who takes a liking to Holly, and anyone watching movies in the eighties should know Mare Winningham who plays Ralph’s wife Jeannie.

You will absolutely hate Marc Menchaca as bully cop Jack Hoskins, but that’s because Menchaca is brilliant as the drunk who’s twisted into El Cuco’s personal Renfield.

Watching The Outsider for the first time with my girlfriend, I often referred to it feeling like “Diet It” or “It Lite with a dash of Salem’s Lot,” but I never meant it as a crack on the quality or to dismiss it as derivative—it’s simply not quite as long as either of those early King stories.

More than any adaptation I’ve seen, The Outsider feels like a Stephen King novel—and I don’t just mean in terms of specific details it lifts from the book. I mean that the experience of watching The Outsider feels as much like the experience of reading a King novel that any screen retelling ever could.

The episodes begin like King chapters begin and, more importantly, end like they end. The final moments of “Tigers and Bears,” the penultimate episode, feels so much like finishing a chapter of a Stephen King novel—the brilliant way he has of ending the precise millisecond the proverbial sh*t hits the fan and leaving you shocked, angry, dismayed, and ravenous for more all at once—if I’d opened my eyes and looked down to find an actual copy of It or Salem’s Lot in my hand, I don’t know that I would’ve been very surprised.

I’ve never had that experience watching a King adaptation, and now that I have, I cherish it. That’s not even necessarily commentary on the quality. There are wonderful King adaptations like Misery, The Shining, The Stand, and more but none of them have captured the actual act of reading a King book like The Outsider.

GFR SCORE

The Outsider is streaming on Max and if you’ve never had the pleasure, do yourself a favor and watch it soon. As absurd a decision as it might seem, you never know when David Zaslav is going to have another money-burning party and purge the streaming platform of even more amazing shows and movies. Keep the kids out of the room, but watch it soon.