At an early age, Rolfe Kanefsky was drawn to films starting with his love of the Abbott & Costello movies. Recognizing his aspirations, his father, editor Victor Kanefsky, got him a job working at Troma before he entered college. He worked as a production assistant on Troma’s War, which gave him a taste of how tough filmmaking can be. While in high school, Rolfe saw the Siskel & Ebert “Women in Danger” special, where they criticized popular slasher films. Rolfe wondered how easy writing a teen exploitation film was, so he watched tons of horror films and started writing. He started getting frustrated at all the tropes and cliches, so he decided to make it a self-referential horror-comedy. With help from his parents, Rolfe was able to amass $100,000 to film what became his feature-film debut. Shot in 1989, There’s Nothing Out There finally saw release in 1992.
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Synopsis
For their Spring Break, a group of high school students decides to go to a house by the lake. One of them, a horror buff named Mike (Craig Peck), is paranoid and thinks the worst may happen. While his friend Nick (John Carhart III) puts up with him, the rest of the group is annoyed to death. Unbeknownst to them, a small alien creature is roaming through the woods and is making its way to the house. After getting into a fight with the lunkheaded Jim (Mark Collver), Mike gets locked in the basement for the night. Soon enough, the creature makes its way to the house and starts picking off the teens one by one. Thankfully, Mike makes his way back to the house after breaking out and helps the survivors fend off the creature. They’re gonna needs tons of shaving cream to survive against the creature!
Review
There’s Nothing Out There is a clever horror-comedy that manages to achieve that perfect balance between the two genres. What helps is that the movie remembers to be a horror film first and have the comedy be secondary. This could work as a standard creature-feature, but the addition of the Mike character makes it an effective spoof. It also helps that the film doesn’t talk down to its audience or seem insulting to the horror genre. Speaking of Mike, Craig Peck does a great job playing essentially the audience’s avatar, saying what the viewer’s thinking. While he can seem snarky and rude, he comes off as likable since he just wants to keep everyone safe. Also, whether intentional or not, the film seems to make a point about how media consumption can warp someone’s reality. It’s much smarter than you’d expect from a low-budget creature-feature.
The rest of the cast fit their roles well, though many of them are more the typical horror film archetypes. Thankfully, none of them are particularly annoying or so awful that you’re waiting for them to die. Also, for such a low budget, the creature effects are fairly impressive, the alien creature having a very unique design. What helps is that they hide the creature just enough so you can still see it while still building suspense. There’s plenty of gore and nudity to satiate any fans of exploitation, as well as some great fourth-wall gags. The funniest gag is when a character sees the boom mic and uses it to swing away from the creature. Moments like these help elevate the film past its low-budget trappings into an enjoyable horror-comedy alongside Evil Dead II. Overall, There’s Nothing Out There is worth seeking out.
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