Therapy, but Make It a Cursed Episode
They’re Outside is what happens when you mash together a YouTube self-help channel, British folk horror, and a very bad idea involving the phrase “ten-day challenge.” It’s part faux-documentary, part found-footage, part urban-legend creep-out—and somehow, it works.
This is not a loud jumpscare machine. It’s a slow, quietly nasty little story about arrogance, grief, and why you probably shouldn’t stroll into rural folklore armed only with a smug smile and a ring light.
The Setup: One Last Episode… and Then Vanish
The film is framed as a documentary about a never-aired episode of the YouTube show Psychology-Inside/Out, hosted by celebrity psychologist Max Spencer. Max is the kind of guy who probably has a brand deck, a podcast, and three different “masterclasses” on monetizing your trauma.
He and his girlfriend Nicole, who runs the camera, head out to the countryside near Hastings to film his boldest episode yet. The hook:
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Max will diagnose and treat a patient
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The patient is Sarah, who has severe agoraphobia
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And he claims he can get her out of the house in ten days
You already know, from the framing device, that Max and Nicole disappear afterward. So we’re watching doomed footage from the start, which gives everything a nice, chilly inevitability. The episode didn’t air because, well… it kind of turned into a snuff-folk-horror project instead of brand content.
Max Spencer: The Smuggest Man in a Haunted County
Tom Wheatley’s Max is pitch-perfect as a guy who absolutely believes in psychology, science, and himself—and absolutely does not believe in rural superstition, the supernatural, or the idea that he might be out of his depth.
He’s not just confident; he’s performatively confident. Everything is framed for his audience:
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“Here’s what agoraphobia is…”
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“Here’s how we’ll challenge Sarah’s limiting beliefs…”
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“Look how brave I am, walking into this clearly cursed woodland…”
There’s a darkly funny tension in watching Max constantly try to reframe events in therapeutic language while the world around him keeps screaming, “No babe, this is folklore now.”
He’s not written as a mustache-twirling villain; he’s more like a walking TED Talk who honestly believes exposure therapy can fix both trauma and centuries-old bogeymen. Which is adorable. And fatal.
Sarah: Not Just “The Patient”
Chrissy Randall’s Sarah is the emotional anchor of the film. She’s not some quirky rural oddball there for color; she’s deeply wounded, angry, and scared.
At first, we’re told her daughter died in a car accident, and that trauma triggered her agoraphobia. That alone would be enough to break someone. But then we find out she lied:
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Her daughter didn’t die in a crash.
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She disappeared in the forest.
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Sarah believes she was taken by Green Eyes—a local legend.
That revelation shifts the story out of “big-city therapist vs. small-town anxiety” and into “grief-stricken mother vs. something old and hungry in the woods.”
Sarah’s belief in Green Eyes isn’t treated as a joke. Even when Max dismisses it, the film doesn’t. You can feel her terror and desperation, and it gives the whole thing a tragic weight that makes the eventual ending hurt more than it shocks.
Green Eyes: Local Legend, Global Bad Idea
Every good folk horror needs a local monster, and here it’s Green Eyes—a practitioner of magic who “spirits people away and they’re never seen again.”
He’s not over-explained. We get:
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Hints of old lore
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Local whispers
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Sarah’s haunted conviction
And that’s about it. Which is exactly the right amount.
Green Eyes feels like the kind of thing that’s been lurking in the background of the landscape for a long time—less a “character” and more a force. The film doesn’t waste time giving him a tragic backstory or a manifesto. He doesn’t want to talk. He wants to take.
And the way he works—through visions, misdirection, and luring people into that endless woods—is just understated enough to be creepy. Especially when he uses Sarah’s daughter as bait.
Endless Woods and Terrible Choices
Once Sarah finally leaves the house, tricked by a vision of her child, the film shifts into full-blown folk horror. She and Max wander through what feels like an endless forest loop, eventually arriving at Green Eyes’s hut.
This is where you shout at the screen:
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Sarah: absolutely not, goodbye
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Max: “I’ll just pop in, what’s the worst that could happen?”
Inside the hut, Max finds a basement-like interior, a covered body, and a bowl of fruit on a table, because nothing says “safe” like “unattended corpse and symbolic snack.”
Then the voices start. They tell him to kill Sarah. And, in a moment that’s equal parts chilling and darkly ironic, he does.
The man who came to “help her leave” winds up murdering her under supernatural suggestion, then starts rambling to the camera about how she was a hopeless case, but he’ll keep helping others. It’s like the most cursed outro to a self-help video ever recorded.
The Final Sign-Off: Influencer in Hell
The ending is beautifully awful.
After killing Sarah, Max:
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Talks like he’s still doing the show
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Frames her death as a “failure of treatment”
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Insists he’ll keep trying to help people
Then he sees those glowing green eyes, panics, and barricades himself in the basement. He turns to the camera and gives his signout for Psychology-Inside/Out, as if this is just another episode and not the last thing he’ll ever record.
It’s darkly funny and deeply bleak: a man so committed to his persona that he’s still doing brand messaging with eldritch eyes staring him down. The documentary framing makes it worse—someone found this, cut it together, and is essentially releasing it as a cautionary feature-length “don’t be this guy.”
Style: Found Footage Without the Nausea
The faux-documentary approach works surprisingly well here.
You get:
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The “episode” footage Max and Nicole shot
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Interviews and commentary from others (like Emily Booth’s Penny)
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The overall framing of “we’re trying to understand what happened”
Unlike a lot of found-footage horror, it doesn’t lean too hard on shaky cam or “why are you still filming?” nonsense. The cameras have a reason to be there: they’re literally making a show.
The horror gains an extra layer because we know this footage was recovered after Max and Nicole vanished. Every time someone laughs off Sarah’s beliefs or Max sneers at the idea of Green Eyes, you can feel the documentary silently going: “Yeah. About that.”
Dark Humor: Roast the Ego, Fear the Woods
The dark humor in They’re Outside mostly comes from how completely Max’s confidence fails him.
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He insists he can fix agoraphobia in ten days. Nature: “That’s adorable.”
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He dismisses an entire local belief system as superstition. Green Eyes: “Hold my fruit bowl.”
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He thinks he’s the neutral observer, untouched by the madness. By the end, he’s the maddest one in the film.
It’s not a joke-a-minute horror-comedy, but there’s a satirical sting to how the story treats media-savvy experts who think everything can be reduced to a case study. The universe doesn’t care about his channel, his methods, or his brand. It just eats him.
Final Verdict: Influencers vs. Folk Horror, Folk Horror Wins
They’re Outside (2020) is a low-budget, clever little horror that punches above its weight by leaning into:
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A strong central premise
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A genuinely unsettling local legend
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A sharply drawn contrast between modern ego and ancient fear
It’s creepy, sad, and quietly vicious, with just enough dark humor to keep it from sinking into pure despair. Max is both ridiculous and tragic, Sarah is more than just a victim, and Green Eyes is one of those off-screen presences who sticks with you longer than some fully CGI monsters ever could.
If you like horror that:
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Mixes found footage with folk terror
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Skewers smug “I can fix you” types
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And leaves you with the uncomfortable feeling that the woods are watching
then this is absolutely worth your time.
Just remember: when someone in a small village tells you about the thing in the forest… maybe start by believing them.
