hey ya.

Outcast (2010).
Dir: Colm McCarthy.
Cast: James Nesbitt, Kate Dickie, Niall Bruton, Ciarán McMenamin, Therese Bradley, Hannah Stanbridge, Daniel Porter, Andrew Martin, James Cosmo, Karen Gillan, some Neds and a big, bald pink man-dog with tiny girls feet.

The smooth of thigh and dusky of skin Romanian/Scottish bird Petronella Bugge (Stanbridge) is a poor 'schoolgirl' (yeah right) whose dreams are dashed by her living in Edinburgh.

Admittedly it is one of Edinburgh's better kept neighbourhoods, I mean there may be piss stains in the lifts, graffiti on the walls and burnt out cars in the gardens but at least the place isn't full of comedy accented junkies.

Unlike The Royal Mile on a weekday.

Anyway, Petronella shares a small rat infested flat with her frighteningly wrinkly alcoholic mother, Jitta (Bradley, who was once in Taggart) and her disabled brother Wilf, who you can tell is meant to have 'the special needs' because he's portrayed as fat with a greasy side parting, top button done up and a habit of sticking his tongue into his bottom lip when he speaks.

Nope nothing clichéd or offensive to see here at all.

You can tell they shot it in Glasgow tho', if it had really been Edinburgh that dog would be on bricks.

Late one night comedy voiced Oirish woman Mary (Red Road's Dickie) and her mono-browed, flat faced son Fergal (Bruton, looking like a cross between Frankenstein's uglier wee brother and a whippet licking a cancerous growth from a gammy leg) move into the flat next door.

But not before mental Mary torches their transit van.

“Begorah! dis be da end of ta line, to be sure!” whispers Mary as her son toasts some crumpets on the van's dashboard.

Poor people eh?

After pouring a Guinness and cooking a potato, Mary waits for her boy to fall asleep (making sure he doesn't hit any more branches of the ugly tree on the way down)  before removing her clothes and starting to paint circles on the walls whilst chanting some made up words and flashing her arse.

Which is nice if you like that kind of thing.

You can tell they're not really Scottish, if they were they'd have stolen the guys camera and sold it for skag by now.

It seems that these random doodlings are actually ancient protection charms, but what is our pikey parent protecting Fergal from?

The fashion police?

Accents are us?

Turns out she’s protecting him from two down and out Oirish wizards, Liam and Cathal (Primeval's McMenamin and the ladies favourite Sir James of Nesbitt), who've been sent on a mission to kill Fergal (to death) for some reason or other.


Before they can even think about stabbing the ugly boy (it'd be a mercy killing if I'm honest) tho,  creepy Cathal must take part in a naked tattooing ceremony that will grant him supernatural senses.

Tho' hopefully not an enhanced sense of smell.

Or shame.

But that's not all, because once he's completed his task, he will gain special magical powers, a wee bit like a hairier less punchable Paul Daniels.

"You'll never get yer hands on mah lucky charms ya bastards!"

Unbeknownst to our man-muck stained magicians (but known to us obviously) Mary knows that they're coming (and not just cos she can smell them) and has a sneaky plan up her sleeve.

Well, it would be up her sleeve if she were wearing clothes.

And what does this sneaky plan involve?

Well it better be something pretty damned impressive after all this nude painting, naked tattooing and bird sacrifice.

Yup, you guessed it, she decides to lock him in the house.

But not all the time obviously, or he wouldn't be able to meet Petronella, her brother and the local inbred bad-boys.

More importantly had he been locked up for good the running time would have had to have been taken up with even more shots of Dickie's pale and uninteresting arse.

"Fire engine!"

As is always the way in these stories, Petronella and Fergal begin to fall in love, much to the chagrin of scary Mary and Petronella's sort of boyfriend Wee Boab, who decides to get his revenge by attempting to finger fuck Petronella's pal Ally (Amelia Pond herself Karen Gillan) in a kiddies play park.

Between mad mothers, Oirish wizards, wandering hands and teen romance you'd be forgiven for thinking that the writers wouldn't have room to fit anything else into the film.

But then you'd be dead wrong and really embarrassed (but not as embarrassed as poor Karen Gillan must have been having to let a tiny Ned boy violently shove his sweaty fingers up her skirt) because that night, when Ally is walking home she's attacked and killed by a big monster.

Your mums cum face (trust me, I know).

With Petronella and Fergal's relationship moving every closer to a bit of 'the sex' (fantastically - and subtly - shown by having shots of Fergal sweating and grimacing in a dirty bath whilst Petronella flies ever high on a kiddies swing, the wind catching her tiny pleated school skirt until it rides up and reveals her big black pants - see screenshot below), our paddy practitioners of magic closing in one the tattie loving twosome and the mysterious beast taking out bewitched social workers (it's way too convoluted to go into, trust me) it's only a matter of time before Mary's spooky premonition that "It all ends here" becomes a violent truth...

It's just a pity it doesn't come to pass a wee bit sooner.

Petronella's big black pants, make sure you keep the remote control in your free hand.

From the director of two episodes of the soggy Mini Driver underwater travesty The Deep comes quite possibly the most depressingly clichéd and arse clenchingly embarrassing horror movie I've had the misfortune to see in a long time.

Well, since A Serbian Film back in December anyway.

One of it's main faults is that the movie appears to have no idea what it wants to be.

Is it a hard hitting social commentary on working class Scotland?

A supernatural romance? 

A murder mystery?

A creature feature?

Or a messy mish-mash of all of the above?

I have a feeling that not even the writer and director know for sure.

Myleene klass: The pikey years.

Maybe I'm being a wee bit harsh tho' and the film isn't really aimed at me but at that small section of Middle England that has only ever seen poor people on television documentaries, think The Bill is cutting edge drama and who think that the last horror movie made in the UK was Carry On Screaming.

And those Americans who try to convince themselves that they're in fact Irish because their granddad wore some green trousers once.

If that is the case then can I just say now that you're welcome to it.

But can we have James Cosmo back when you're finished please?

"The most original horror since Let The Right One In" says the poster.

Original?

Nope, but horrific?

Fuck yes but unfortunately for all the wrong reasons.

It may only be January but I'll stick my neck out and say that I doubt anything else will come along this year to take Outcast's well deserved 'what's the fucking point?' crown.


And I'm definitely sure we that no other film this year will feature such an unintentionally amusing monster, the fucker looks like Ren Hoek from Ren and Stimpy on steroids.


I haven't laughed so much since the dead baby swapping storyline in Eastenders.



Well at least the year can't get any worse.

Can it?