Ramsey's Rambles By Ramsey Campbell OUTCAST 2010, Momentum, £4.29, 93m 46s, PAL DVD-2


Early in Colm McCarthy’s OUTCAST Jitta (Therese Bradley) gives her son Fergal (Niall Bruton) what appears to be a first edition of Mervyn Peake’s TITUS ALONE for his 15th birthday. While the reference is apposite—a book about a boy cast out from his inheritance and never really able to find his way back home—she might at least as well have given him one of Alan Garner’s books, THE OWL SERVICE in particular. OUTCAST is squarely in this tradition of myth reinvented in an urban setting with adolescent protagonists, and it’s also a fine example of contemporary urban su- pernatural horror (a form perfected if not invented by Fritz Leiber and very vital today—see, for in- stance, the recent graphic novel CRADLEGRAVE). Mother and son are hiding from Fergal’s fa- ther Cathal (James Nesbitt) on an Edinburgh hous- ing estate, where we’re given our only sight of the title of the film, as graffiti. The Ts are inverted crosses, and the A has been replaced by an insectoid symbol reminiscent of the Martian vis- ages in QUATERMASS AND THE PIT (a nod to another film that brought folk tales up to date?). The symbol is among the tattoos Cathal acquires as a preamble to hunting Fergal down, to kill him and render the magical tattooed skin permanent. How authentic a Celtic tradition is this? I don’t believe it matters; I think we’re seeing the kind of elaboration Arthur Machen performed on fragments of myth. As with Lovecraft, truth to existing folklore is less important than imagination, and much of OUTCAST is bracingly oblique, suggesting more than it explains. No doubt this is why it attracted a


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swarm of bewildered one-star reviews on Amazon, a reaction that tends to guarantee worth. Fergal becomes involved with teenage Petronella (Hanna Stanbridge) from the tenement flat next door, a development Jitta dislikes, al- though she stops short of fending it off with a spell. Among the film’s strengths is its restraint in pre- senting sorcery, which makes it the more magi- cal. In one striking scene, Jitta curses a housing officer (Christine Tremarco) and sends her to roam the estate. It’s as far removed from the curse in DRAG ME TO HELL as Jitta’s magical duels with Cathal are remote from the finale of THE RAVEN; there’s barely a special effect to be seen. Equally, Cathal’s attempts at conjuration border on the banal—eviscerating a convincingly grubby pigeon, for instance—and the various magical events take place amid urban desolation: abandoned build- ings, littered back alleys. Even Cathal’s bid to talk to the dead in a morgue is (a grisly bit of self- mutilation aside) persuasively unspectacular. There’s a real sense (again reminiscent of Machen) that the occult underlies everyday life and goes unnoticed by most of us—literally so in a scene where Jitta proves to have hidden in a doorway that doesn’t look quite capable of concealing her, and in the way that her apartment stays elusive to anyone who isn’t welcome, even the housing of- ficer who brought her there. The Laird who has to give permission for the hunt to take place on his territory, and who decides what conjurations Cathal can employ, is met in a back-street pub and bought a drink (James Cosmo’s performance invests him

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