The Outsider (2020)

A riveting series that will keep you on the edge of your seat, “The Outsider” is a must-watch show.

This is a great-looking show with brilliant work in particular from Mendelsohn and Erivo, who should be remembered come next awards season cycle.

Incredible cast, dynamite opening, too-leisurely progression, overly familiar execution. Watch with care, but watch.

The Outsider is deluxe King, befitting a tall tale that gains imaginative power by slowly weaving its spooky and supernatural elements into a gripping detective story. [20 Jan - 2 Feb 2020, p.8]

[Mendelsohn's] stellar turn is complemented by uniformly great work from the entire cast, with Nicholson (a criminally undervalued actress) as the standout. ... Some too-convenient plot developments aside, The Outsider casts a chilly pall that creeps into one’s bones.

Its writers and directors massage the tale’s foreboding evenly and with skill, although it takes about three episodes to get it moving. ... Fortunately King’s stories live and breathe through his characters, their interior drives and quirks, which is where Cynthia Erivo’s Holly Gibney enters and almost singlehandedly picks up the inertia holding back “The Outsider” and kicks it loose.

Tone and style go a long way for “The Outsider,” starting with how it leaves a lingering impression that’s as equally searing as the show’s abrasive acts of violence. But then as the series loses some of its grace, the tone plays out like a crucial factor that validates some of its kookier developments.

“The Outsider” rarely feels padded. Most everything moves the story forward, without waving a flag labeled “exposition.” The production does drift into some arty cliches — dissonant strings and low frequency sound effects to create tension, chamber music to underscore an atrocity, creeping camera moves, shallow focus and, as mentioned, darkness (so much darkness). But, more often, “The Outsider” places its faith in people, and it pays off.

The Outsider’s relative sprawl—10 hours to tackle a nearly 600-page book—affords unusual leeway and breathing room, which Price exploits with intelligence and deft creativity. It also helps that the cast is uniformly excellent.

Much of the credit here belongs to Price, who wrote the first five chapters, deftly beginning with a story that appears rooted in reality before gradually peeling back layers -- in exceptionally creepy fashion -- that suggest a more unsettling force at play.

A largely downcast affair, not too unlike the first season of “True Detective,” another HBO crime show that veers into grim areas. But it’s a compelling lament, one that has its feet on the ground as it reaches into the beyond.

[Price and Bateman's] focus is on the peculiarities of the mystery and the procedural aspects of the investigation, which are unpacked with grace and clarity via interrogations and well-executed time jumps. Mendelsohn, too, is a steady centerpiece, confidently playing a flawed, emotionally broken lawman.

Lugubrious, also highly watchable.

Given the wildness of the story, The Outsider sometimes feels ludicrously tony, but it’s undeniably gripping—a beach read rendered by real artists. The series is so clever that it might take you a while to realize that it’s essentially Dracula. ... Or, perhaps even more fitting, The Outsider suggests a merging of Kolchak with Price’s The Night Of.

The past few years have seen a flood of Stephen King adaptations, and The Outsider is different than all of them. It's fascinating to see his familiar themes (grief) and tropes (people controlled by a malevolent force) rendered in the somber tones of an HBO drama.

It is pretty odd when the sober, somber investigation turns to talk of myth and lore, but The Outsider mostly sells it, giving an unnervingly credible, lived-in texture to the notion of, as one character calls it, the bogeyman.

HBO’s 10-episode series is still hampered by a few of the original story’s trappings, but its author knows better than to take his audience’s trust for granted. With the help of a great cast (led by Ben Mendelsohn) and eerie, stark direction from Emmy-winner Jason Bateman, “The Outsider” isn’t on the level of Price’s past work — but it’s far better than this story has any right to be.

King has never been the best at juggling his tones, and Price’s adaptation doesn’t set itself apart. When confronted with its own worst impulses, The Outsider embraces rather than confronts the silly monster tale lurking within.

The details pile up, but intrigue fails to mount.

It takes King’s spooky, jokey, thinly characterized plot machine and turns it into a psychological workout. If that lines up with your taste, “The Outsider” will be perfectly watchable and probably even enjoyable. ... Just settle in for a very slow boil.

The Outsider is an interesting, but not completely satisfying experiment. It's an intentional collusion of incompatible genres, an answer-driven police procedural intersecting with ephemeral supernatural elements that have to be believed before they can be seen.

The infectious nature of evil is an underlying theme here. This is one case where an infection doesn’t move quickly enough. Is it watchable? Sure. Is it memorable? Nah.

It's a serious piece of work, with talented writers like Richard Price and Dennis Lehane doing the adaptation. But the result is curiously—and annoyingly—uneven, as if different production crews took over on alternate days undoing one another's work.

What starts off as a relatively standard, well-executed crime drama eventually veers into more supernatural, King-style territory, and the two tones don’t necessarily mix well.

“The Outsider” doesn’t rival “True Detective” for jolts or for insights about the human condition or the impulses that bring about crime. And its slow pace emphasizes the absence of what crime dramas can do so well. The stakes here seem to be massive; gradually, it becomes clear that an epidemic of darkness is overtaking many. But getting there, with so little in the way of character or freshness of tone, simply exhausts even an interested viewer.

Veers from being a stylishly dismal detective procedural to become a hokey horror story about a malevolent evil that is part folklore, part contagious skin rash. ... The acting is the biggest reason to keep going.

The performers — also including Mare Winningham as Ralph’s wife, Julianne Nicholson as Terry’s wife, and The Night Of‘s Bill Camp as a local lawyer — are all strong, but in service of storytelling that doesn’t always deserve them. Imagine the more overheated aspects of True Detective, but with more blatant nods to demons and far less impressive visuals.