Like their previous docuseries Sasquatch, producers Mark Duplass and Joshua Rofé subvert the supernatural with Out There: Crimes of the Paranormal. The new Hulu docuseries welcomes viewers into different explorations of supernatural creatures and unexplained events, except that’s all just an invitation to something bigger and more complicated. The show utilizes the paranormal as a way to explore different communities, people, and issues in our culture. A story about lizard people becomes an exploration of misinformation and political extremism; a portrait of a UFO enthusiast questions the line between extreme beliefs and mental illness. Duplass and Rofé spoke with MovieWeb about the show (and you can watch our full interview above).
“There was a sort of organic unfolding of this show that sprung out of Sasquatch, the documentary series that we made together,” said Duplass. “And I remember one of the first things Josh told me when he was pitching me the Sasquatch series was, you know, ‘We’re gonna have to figure out who the monster is — is it Sasquatch, or is it the people?’ And it was very simple, but it really stuck with me, and we carried that as a little bit of a North Star through the making of that show. And when the show came out, what accidentally happened is that it tapped into a whole community [of] conspiracy theorists that Josh and I were not really a part of.” He added:
And all these stories kept coming at us. And we said, ‘God, there might be more to tell here.’ So then we had to ask ourselves the question, which is a very important question to ask — what’s the reason to make this other than just to cash a check? How can this be important? How can this belong to our culture?
“And I think that the answer is a many-faceted answer,” continued Duplass. “But for me, the core of it was, if we could tell a story with really interesting creature lore and cryptids, and tie some of that lore to the human aspect, and find a new human story that hadn’t been told yet, and take these sort of ancient myths and parlay that in a way that could be slightly illuminative about something that’s happening in our culture right now, that was the goal.”
“With every subsequent conversation that Mark and I and the rest of the team had, it felt like we were discussing a different facet of humanity, or a brokenness within that facet of humanity, [like] grief or socioeconomic hardship,” added Rofé, who went on to say:
“Every time, it was just a new door opening, and so it just became about the pursuit of that. And then, eventually, there were eight stories that we thought were deep and human, but they were also strange and creepy in the way that you want these things to be as well. At the end of the day, it’s for an audience, so we felt like we needed to be human, but we wanted to fulfill what we would want as viewers out of a genre piece.”
Preparing for What True Believers Think About Out There: Crimes of the Paranormal
Ultimately, while it creates a splendidly spooky and mysterious atmosphere about various crimes and mysteries, many episodes of Out There: Crimes of the Paranormal disproves or sidelines the supernatural element in favor of an exploration of humanity. We wondered if Duplass and Rofé were concerned at all about the response from true believes of the supernatural or conspiracy theorists who might see a title like Crimes of the Paranormal and expect your standard episode of Ancient Aliens. Duplass told us:
“You’re never going to make everybody happy. And you’re either met with that or you accept that before you make something. But if you can stomach that, which personally I can, then you end up meeting people who, in this instance, are believers, who are actually grateful that you’re taking the conversation into a place that maybe even they didn’t expect. You’re illuminating something for them that they didn’t see, and vice versa for us as the filmmakers. So I really think that on each episode we ended up finding that sort of sweet spot around exactly that.”
“Yeah, I don’t know how people are going to respond to this. I’m excited to see what happens,” added Rofé. “I’m hopeful that people are open to looking at these things from different angles.” It’s definitely worth doing so. Out There: Crimes of the Paranormal is now streaming on Hulu, and on Disney+ in most areas; you can watch it through the link below: