Twisted tropes and a finely tuned reverence for horror films pits a group of teens against a goofy green monster

Horror films often fall into two extremes: those that (1) religiously adhere to convention or (2) mockingly try to subvert genre expectations. Each direction has its own merits and pitfalls. Films that subvert expectations too obviously result in Scream-like cynicism; inflexible movies that can’t escape convention are bound to bore the audience to sleep. So what happens when a horror film tries to subvert these tropes while taking place in a house in the woods populated by horny teens being hunted by one dumb, ugly monster? That’s how There’s Nothing Out There exceeds expectations. 

Rolfe Kanefsky’s 1990 comedy doesn’t poke fun at horror films out of self-righteous spite. Instead, its humor comes from a finely tuned reverence. Rather than lazily checking the boxes, the film decides to point out the boxes and avoid becoming generic by being generic. The predictable skinny dipping scene is cut aggressively short because the water is freezing; the house in the woods is ultra-modern, with a security system (that they forget to use) and exceptional lighting. The film provides these kids with multiple routes out of their horror movie narrative, but it forces them to act the way dumb teens in a horror movie would.

The group fulfills every trope-ready character: The tough guy dating the beautiful blonde, the bickering couple in charge and the know-it-all loner. David (Jeff Dachis), the group’s nerd, isn’t an outcast or a dweeb. He’s in a relationship with the attractive international student Janet (Claudia Flores) and is built up as the intellectual most likely to survive. Instead, it’s this popularity and relationship that put him in the position to be the first to die when he and Janet go on a late-night walk through the forest.

The real outcast of the group is Mike, played beautifully by Craig Peck. Mike is an insufferable horror movie fanatic who warns the group at every turn that every occurrence is in some way playing into a greater horror narrative. Mike is the hook of the film. He is the answer to the ever-popular question: “Haven’t they ever seen a horror film?”

Naturally, the group laughs and scolds him for his childlike fixation on the subject. Even when strange things start to happen at night, the group refuses to acknowledge his warnings. Mike scoffs at the possibility of strange noises just being from a wild animal, but when he warns of zombies or mutants, he demands the utmost respect. But he’s right all along. There is something out there.

A lesser film might try to make the viewer feel sorry for him, but Mike is so obnoxious about his obsession that the film has no choice but to play his misfortune for laughs. When the others lock him in the basement for interrupting a sex scene while dressed like a low-rent Jason Voorhees, there’s no moment of introspection from Mike, but rather, an immediate brief fight scene with the monster. Mike continues to complain. This sequence is a welcome change from the first third of the film, which primarily revolves around Mike annoying the others.

In spite of its self-awareness, There’s Nothing Out There still hits the normal beats of a classic ’80s slasher flick. It just does so on a delayed timeframe. Jim “the tough guy” (Mark Collver) and Doreen “the blonde” (Wendy Bednarz) are almost attacked during sex, but they meet their demise during a rare, genuinely romantic moment later in the film. The film still hits the usual beats; the monster is just a little behind schedule.

As for the monster, its origin story is simple: It falls from the sky in the first scene, that’s it. Mike hypothesizes it could be “a mutant baby, an alien that’s been in the snow for 2,000 years, a genetic monster created by some crazy scientist,” until rightly asking, “what difference does it make?” The monster has only two purposes: It wants to reproduce with the women, and it wants to kill the men. A small, slimy, fortune cookie-shaped frog with a toothy grin isn’t what viewers would expect for a ruthless monster. But the little green bastard in There’s Nothing Out There manages to be both bloodthirsty and goofy at the same time; recklessly launching itself onto its victims and looking like a rejected muppet in the process. This is the most blatant middle-finger to classic horror convention. Who cares about the origin story? Instead of wasting 30 minutes finding out the monster’s whole history, the film allows itself more freedom to have fun with the kills and its abilities.

There’s Nothing Out There creates great opportunity for itself to be creative with the expected horror conventions than films that are simply trying to subvert the genre. It knows we know what to expect and has fun with it; which is exactly what makes most of the humor and visual gags work. In its biggest breach of the fourth wall, Nick (John Carhart III) escapes death by swinging over the monster on a boom mic. This kind of visual gag fits within the film’s fourth-wall-breaking nature, but some of the more self-referential humor, such as a quick side-eye to the camera from Mike, can be trite. It’s not that these jokes aren’t funny, but in a film that’s so focused on making fun of horror convention, these gags feel too obvious.

By the end of the film, after the monster meets an oven, the surviving characters escape the house and drive down the road where they meet an earlier victim of the green terror. While this roadside hitchhiker is going on about how she doesn’t remember what happened to her, Mike’s influence starts to creep into the minds of the leads. The hitchhiker is kicked to the curb.

There’s Nothing Out There scratches an itch that’s hard to explain. It’s an earnest, ironic and unpretentious film that breaks our conception of classic horror by unashamedly embracing its influences. 

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