“Outlier” is an out of the frying pan and into the fire examination of toxic relationships and the implicit magnetic lure of substituting one bad situation for another. Director and co-writer Nate Strayer’s lockdown inspired debut is once dripping with potential. With “Outlier”, co-writers Jona Doug and Strayer take “Misery” through Mark Zuckerberg’s “Meta-Verse” looking glass.

Olivia (played with dizzying vulnerability from Jessica Denton) escapes the clutches of her abuser boyfriend and is offered protection and sanctuary from Thomas (the opaque everyman played by Thomas Cheslek). However, after a short time in Thomas’ care, Olivia starts to suspect that she’s not simply being offered a kind of relationship rehab but rather that she’s traded one cell for another. “Outlier” asks what Thomas’ intentions are? Is he a saviour or a captor of another kind?

Like any debut, you measure the aspiration rather than every aspect of the execution. This pandemic inspired, genre-bending chamber piece is confidently and formally well told. Strayer dwells in that feeling of impending dread, settling into a direct visual style that hints at the threats and surveillance peeking in from the edges of the frame. Strayer deploys a manipulative, melancholic, straining score from Ahmed Arifin to keep

Jessica Denton’s Olivia is a role required to walk a tightrope. Olivia’s emotional wounds don’t just create fissures but rather gaping chasms. Olivia’s internal compass is spinning like a top; her instincts are dulled, she’s essentially blind to reason. But, unfortunately, those nuances don’t register with the right frequency. Often burdened with carrying “Outlier”, Denton’s performance felt like it was designed with exclamations alongside every emotion.

Thomas Cheslek (who plays the deeply ambivalent Thomas) has an unpolished quality in his delivery and performance that should grate and distract. But, instead, Cheslek’s delivery has this strange implacable quality so that you’re not sure what he’s thinking, feeling and calculating. He’s a sturdy, lumbering, everyman that feels at once non-threatening and makes the hairs stand up on your neck. It’s that quality, that if nurtured correctly, could be reminiscent of the incredible John Carroll Lynch (JCL). JCL is a man who can play the Zodiac killer/Arthur Leigh Allen and arguably cinema’s greatest soon to be father, Norm Gunderson. One thing’s for sure, writers Doug and Strayer have cemented the self-made tech mogul with childhood trauma as a new kind of villain archetype.

The final sequence of “Outlier”, which I won’t spoil, was the definitive showcase for Strayer’s talent. In combat sport, they say that a fighter can steal the round for the judges with a frantic flurry in the final 30 seconds. With a subtle change in perspective, a final shocking ambivalent implication, Strayer stole it and scored big with me.

★★½/★★★★