Movie: He’s Out There
Production Year: 2018
Tubi Provided Summary: While vacationing at their remote lake house, a mother and two daughters fight to fend off a psychopath who’s been planning their abduction for years.
Film Can Be Accessed At: https://tubitv.com/movies/550589/he-s-out-there?start=true
Does This Movie Pass The Bechdel Test: Yes
Character Analysis:
- Laura: Compassionate mother, caring, sensitive to others, feminine
- Shawn: Flakey but caring father, loving, eager for forgiveness, mostly feminine traits
- Kayla: Older daughter of Laura and Shawn, sensitive, emotional
- Maddie: Younger daughter of Laura and Shawn, naive, sensitive
- Owen: Caretaker of the grounds, ominous, bit creepy, masculine
- Masked Man/John: Antagonist, dark and brooding, masculine
Death Analysis
- Shawn: First to die, quick death scene, killed off-screen with an ax before having his eyes cut out, killed by Masked Man/John.
- Owen: Second to die, quick death scene, axed in the head, killed by Masked Man/John
Survival Analysis
- Kayla: Survives the events of the film. Shaken but uninjured
Ambiguous Endings
- Laura: Attacked, tied up, and axed in the side. When she escapes surviving the film, she is bleeding profusely and her ending is not secure.
- Madie: Maddie is poisoned early in the film and is very weak by the time the story wraps up with no proof that she survives the attack outside leaving the scene with her mother and sister.
- Masked Man/John: The antagonist is attacked by Laura and stabbed numerous times with a knife and ax. He is believed to be dead until the body disappears.
Final Statistics:
Character Sex Ratio: 3 Females: 3 Males
Character Survivor Ratio: 1 Female: 0 Males (not including ambiguous characters)
Character Death Ratio: 0% of Females to 66.6% of Males (not including ambiguous characters)
Final Takeaways:
He’s Out There offers little to nothing new to the horror community. It depicts the standard story of a damsel in distress while her male savior is absent but on the way. Much like the standard horror film, her savior perishes early on, leaving Laura virtually helpless as she defends her two young children against a strong and intelligent male antagonist.
Throughout the film, Laura makes many mistakes and ill-thought-out decisions that put her and her daughters at risk. Fortunately for the protagonists, these decisions do not get them killed in the end, but the on-screen deaths are not better either. There is an overall lack of on-screen gore, but what is shown falls in line with the tradition of horror films reserving extended and drawn-out fear for female characters while male characters are killed swiftly or off-screen.
Despite He’s Out There passing the Bechdel test, it falls short in other areas where it had the chance to offer progressive themes and scenes. The feminine characters, as analyzed with the Sex role Perspective, take the role of the objects of horror while the male characters take the role of antagonists or swiftly expendable heroes. Because of this, He’s Out There is anything but a refreshing film in the horror genre.
Shared by: Ariana Nichols
Image Credit: IMDb