Film / There's Nothing Out There

Stacy: "A discussion, huh? About.. horror films, perhaps?"

Mike: "No, about what has the potential of becoming a horror film unless we do something about it quickly. There is something out there. Don't listen to me though, go right ahead."

Stacy: "There's NOTHING out there!"

There's Nothing out There is a 1991 horror movie parody. The film was written and directed by Rolfe Kanefsky, who wrote it when he was 18 and directed it when he was 20.

It's spring break. Seven teenagers go to a cabin by a pond in the woods for the weekend:

• Nick: Whose family's summer home is the scene for most of the film
• Stacy: Nick's girlfriend
• Jim: A friend
• Doreen: Jim's girlfriend
• Dave: The bespectacled one
• Janet: Dave's foreign girlfriend
• Mike: the one without a girlfriend, who loves Horror Films

On the way to the cabin, Mike sees a car on its side and overhears that a girl is missing and assumes they are driving right into a horror movie. Everyone else scoffs at the notion and they continue the trip, despite Mike's vocal reservations. As the plot progresses there is lots of Lampshade Hanging about horror tropes. It is kind of like Scream only predating it by five years and with a very meager budget.

Originally distributed by budget video distributor Prism and later on Image Entertainment, it was re-released in 2011 by Troma, and the film is available to watch on their YouTube channel here.

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Tropes in this film:

• Artistic License – Physics: In the fight scenes some characters get knocked in directions they weren't hit in and some light taps send them flying. This is more due to the editing, really, than Fight Scene Failure.
• Aside Glance: By Mike after Stacy asks him if they're in some sort of movie.
• Attempted Rape: The alien tries this with any woman that comes within its reach. Stacy is the first to notice that the alien seemed to be trying to get at her crotch instead of trying to kill her (thus validating Mike's theory about the green slime), and it makes a prolonged attack on Janet that only stops when she is accidentally killed.
• Back from the Dead: Turns out Sally survived the beginning of the movie.
• Backstory: Averted, mostly. The only backstory we have is the characters are all friends, Mike and Nick have known each other a long time, and Nick spent most of his childhood summers at the cabin.
• Behind the Black: In the basement, a cat falls onto Stacy for a Cat Scare. Mike notes there was no place the cat could have been hiding, and it only dropped down at that moment because, basically, the script demanded it.
• Better than a Bare Bulb: Mike exists to lampshade the horror tropes, and insist that they're all in a horror movie and need to not make the same dumb decisions every horror movie character makes that gets them killed.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: When Stacy asks Mike if he really thinks they're in a horror movie, as he considers the notion he briefly looks directly at the camera before his eyes go back to Stacy and he replies "It's a distinct possibility." Later, Nick uses a Visible Boom Mike to swing away from the alien.
• Brick Joke: Sally, the girl in the car at the beginning, comes out of the woods in front of the van.
• Cassandra Truth: Mike is the only one who sees what is going on.
• Cat Scare:
  • To Stacy and Mike. Mike later muses if animals just hang by their claws waiting to drop on people at the worst time.
  "Where did it come from? There's nothing here but ceiling! I love how these animals just fall out of nowhere, right into your hands. What do they do, just hang up there by their claws and wait for people to pass by?"
  • Played with later when Nick drops the cat on the alien, possibly hoping to invoke this on the monster.
• Chekhov's Gun: The ugly sunglasses in the car. Mike uses them to defend himself from the creature's mind-control rays.
• Clothing Damage: Janet's skirt gets torn off when the creature first attacks her. Later, it tears her top open.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: Mike is absolutely this, obnoxiously so, even if he was right this time. You can't blame the others for ignoring his nonsense.
• The Cuckoolander Was Right: Everyone assumes Mike is a Cloud Cuckoo Lander, but indeed he's right.
• Don't Go in the Woods: Mentioned by Mike several times. First, him sarcastically saying he should just go wandering out into the woods to get killed, later constantly insisting his friends don't go wandering in the woods (or down to the shed, or to the pond for skinny-dipping).
• Dull Surprise: The actress playing Stacy does sarcasm well, but when she's supposed to be surprised or scared it sort of falls apart.
• Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong: The alien keeps trying to reproduce with female humans, and may have succeeded at least once.
• Fan Disservice: Janet spends the final part of the movie lying on her back across the couch, topless with breasts in full view, and quite dead.
• Fanservice: All the girls go topless at one time or another. Stacy spends half the movie inexplicably barefoot and in her bikini, despite having time to get changed or put shoes on.
• Fanservice Extra: The group of punks going "skinny dipping" except they all manage to keep their pants on.
• Female Groin Invincibility: Averted, perhaps all the moreso because the groin in question has less protection. When Nick knees Stacy in the groin,it takes her out of the final battle.
• Foreign Exchange Student: Janet. The character was originally supposed to be a nerdy girl until Brazilian-born Claudia Flores got the part.
• Forgotten Superweapon: The burglar alarm, which could have called the police.
• Groin Attack Under the alien's control, Stacy grabs Nick by the balls and attacks him with a knife. He responds with a knee to her groin that knocks her down, effectively neutralizing both and leaving Mike to fight the alien alone.
• Harbinger of Impending Doom: Mike recognizes an investigation of a bloody car crash and missing girl as a warning to turn back. Of course, they don't and the film progresses.
• Idiot Ball:
  • Stacy's is the clearest. In the beginning of the movie she is made out to be one of the most well-grounded of the group, but then it turns out she's Wrong Genre Savvy.
    Mike, to Stacy: Is someone paying you to stand by an open window? There are some razor blades in the corner you can play with if you like.
  • No one remembers the burglar alarm they set off at the beginning of the movie, until Nick sets it off when they leave. They could have had "the police here in half an hour".
• I'm Not Hungry: Everyone, upon suspicion that the green slime on the pot was from the chicken Stacy cooked.
• I'm Melting!: Type D, where the flesh melts but the bones stay. Jim. He was injected with the green slime.
• Interrupted Intimacy: Jim and Doreen, when Mike comes downstairs.
• Made of Plasticine: Doreen's neck, severed by a simple pane of glass.
• Mars Needs Women: Evidently the reason why the alien doesn't slime the girls.

• Mind-Control Eyes: With lasers!
• No Animals Were Harmed: Taken further than normal in the end credits:
  None of the animals in this film were killed or damaged in any way. Peter the Cat is living happily at the Kim's^note Played the "Man in Black" home and the rat is living with Bonnie Bowers^note Played Stacy. For further information about the well-being of these animals, you can call up and ask.

• Plot Time: Night doesn't last long. Neither does the next day.

• Refuge in Audacity: Mike and Stacy temporarily escape the alien when Mike ties its tentacles around a tree trunk.
• Right Through the Wall: Nick and Stacy have sex in the room next to Mike.
• Sex Signals Death: Two separate couples have sex. Only one of those couples survives.

• Skinny Dipping:
  • Oddly enough the crowd of punks who go "skinny dipping" in the pond at the beginning of the film only have their shirts off at the most, and one girl doesn't even take her top off.
  • Later, Jim and Doreen do it properly.
• Standardized Sitcom Housing:
  • Three different houses were used for filming the house, making the layout confusing.
  • The basement figures into this movie - the only ways out are the door and the window. Strangely, however, when the house is viewed from the outside the basement is mostly above ground (note the steps the characters have to walk up to get to the front door) and the basement has a blacked-out solarium on the front.
• Tap on the Head: Janet runs into a tree and is out until afternoon!
• Ten Little Murder Victims: Order of death - Dave (who has so few lines you almost forget about him by the end of the film), Jim, Janet, Doreen, plumber.
• The End... Or Is It?: The survivors encounter Sally, the girl from the beginning on the road as they're fleeing. She seems all right...but there's a day she can't account for where she was in the woods with the alien, and she says that she has some discomfort in her stomach...
• Title Drop: By Stacy at dinner.
• Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Mike just tells Nick and Stacy to get all the light bulbs and mirrors.
• Visible Boom Mic: Used to escape the monster!
• Watch Out for That Tree!: Janet, meet tree. Tree, Janet.
• Weaksauce Weakness: The alien doesn't like shaving cream. It doesn't kill him, he just doesn't like it squirted in his mouth and eyes - just like anyone else.
• Would Hit a Girl: Nick knees Stacy in the groin. He doesn't have much choice considering that she's under the alien's control, crushing his balls with one hand and trying to stab him with the other. There are no hard feelings after.

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