A mind-melting horror compared to ‘The Blair Witch Project’ and made with only $15k is still confusing people a year later

The minute the clock struck midnight on the final day of 2022, it certainly didn’t take long until horror fanatics grinned from ear to ear in anticipation of 2023’s strong lineup of genre goodies. Amongst those indie treasures, one mind-melting feature in particular seriously paralyzed folks’ cerebrums and perplexed our minds over the idea of how a horror movie can shock you so badly. This was essentially the case for Robbie Banfitch’s The Outwaters — which is unsurprisingly still confusing film buffs to this day.

Despite releasing in the U.S. back in February, the spine-tingling horror project originally premiered at the New Jersey Film Festival back in February 2022, where an array of film critics and early reviewers were horrified by the project’s insane premise and out-of-this-world sequences. Following this premiere, the found footage horror went on to play at a variety of other festivals — which only increased folks’ wonder and earned a strong comparison to The Blair Witch Project.

Even over a year past its OG premiere, The Outwaters — which was shot with an estimated budget of just $15,000 — continues to confuse people and force a fair amount of Redditors on the r/horror platform to question why exactly this “bad” movie was even made. Many commenters insisted that confusing audiences isn’t necessarily a good thing, explaining that more people shook their heads and turned away from the film rather than gravitated toward it.

Regardless of opinion, earning praise in the tune of being compared to one of the greatest found footage horrors of all time is not an accomplishment that is to be taken lightly. So perhaps the best course of action is to fire up the television set and give the film a second try because a year has been long enough to forgive.