Outcast Review

A gritty urban fantasy with a strong Scots-Irish accent. In the end, it’s a werewolf movie but takes interesting detours to get there. Dour Mary (Kate Dickie) and teenager Fergal (Niall Bruton), fugitives from a magical race, hide on a Scots council estate, pursued by embittered human Cathal (James Nesbitt), claiming his cause is just but projecting a ferocious cruelty. A beast stalks the concrete wastes, disembowelling the unwary (Karen Gillan, cast pre-stardom, is the first guts-on-the-ground victim). A confident mix of traditional magic and social realism, it lays on the grim in the world of the estate, then establishes outsiders who seem like victims but are more dangerous than the locals. As in Red Road, Dickie is outstanding.