The thing about the horror genre is, it’s hard to feel tension and peril if you really don’t like any of the characters and don’t find the antagonist (whether it’s a slasher or an environment or the inside of someone’s mind) interesting.

They’re Outside starts with some potential. It’s a framed found-footage film. At the beginning a narrator (Nicholas Vince) introduces the film with a bit of a The Ring warning: watching the video tends to doom the viewer, haha, but that’s not real, haha. The video itself has been edited by Penny (Emily Booth) –whom we don’t know yet — who was driven to suicide by the process. It is occasionally intercut with flash-frames which are supposed to be disturbing but come across as cartoonish.

“If you’re happy and you know it, kill yourself” –recurring not-creepy refrain

Max (Tom Wheatley) is a psychology Youtuber, and he and his girlfriend Nicole (Nicole Miners) are doing a piece about Sarah (Christine Randall), an agoraphobe in an isolated house in the woods outside of Sussex (though everyone is American). Max claims he can cure Sarah in ten days, despite evidence suggesting he is not a psychologist but simply a brash online personality with a “just snap out of it” attitude toward mental health.

It turns out Sarah remains indoors partly because “They’re Outside” — “they” being the spirits of the dead, led by a local legend, “Green Eyes.” Max, of course, scoffs, and of course, the legend seems to be real after they spend some time in the woods.

This movie seems to be trying to dance between The Blair Witch Project and The Wicker Man, with pagan English elements combining with found-footage documentary footage. Max is a douchecanoe. Sarah is mean to Nicole, calling her names and making eyes at Max. Neighbor Penny is a new-ager friend to Sarah, trying to bring Max around to understanding that the murderous Green Eyes is real.

At one point we learn some backstory that is supposed to humanize Max, but my god, it just makes him worse.

Can found footage intersect with folk horror? Both are trendy horror types these days, and I’d argue that in this case at lease, the blend does not work. A more traditionally-shot film with the same plot would be more enjoyable, if the characters had any chemistry. Any at all. Like, any.

One of my favorite movie types is when the film comes across as a project of people who actually like each other, and enjoy the process. This is not one of those films.

That said, the setting is lush and eldritch in a way that deep forests and Green Man parades and mummer’s dances naturally convey, the acting is adequate for what they have to work with, the cinematography isn’t annoyingly shaky-cam. They’re Outside is technically competent with a backstory legend that has potential, but overall it just falls flat and left me feeling “Who cares?” when the ending came.

3 out of 10 Green Eyes