And because his actors are so good, they carry many scenes of dialogue that all the more command your attention, with shots that are always longer than you expect them to be.
Bateman matches King's grim hybrid of horror and mystery with a perfect visual style, the camera slowly creeping on characters as they talk quietly in spare, shadowy spaces.
In a way that it's unlikely to top (speaking as someone who has seen the first six episodes), the pilot for "The Outsider" is all-cylinders direction for TV. Mendelsohn in particular gives some of the best work of his career as Ralph, a man helplessly flung into a case that only reflects his own painful question marks, which he proceeds to shoulder in a casual way that's disturbing itself. A world is quietly developed through incredible performances that are finely tuned for all the grandiose feelings covered, like how Nicholson's Marcy carries the burden of shame when her husband is accused of being a child killer, or how Bill Camp barrels into the story as a forceful family lawyer named Howie, clashing with the authorities who are convinced Terry did it. “The Outsider” (adapted by writer Richard Price) quickly populates itself with such fascinating contradictions, while establishing the dynamics of its many wounded characters in a small Georgia town where everyone is on a first-name basis. With a great balance of past and present, the pilot then retraces the crime and its many weird details through eyewitness accounts, while touching upon what Terry claims he was doing at the same time-many miles away. When Ralph has English teacher and family man Terry arrested in public, in front of 100 people at a Little League game, it’s incredibly damaging to Terry’s family, including his wife Marcy ( Julianne Nicholson). The cop that brings him in is Ben Mendelsohn’s weary Ralph Anderson, who previously lost his own son to a horrific murder, and is far from a sense of closure. He also does fine work on-camera as Terry Maitland, a man who has been accused of a vicious child murder, with many witnesses placing him at the crime scene, and even behind the wheel of the suspicious white van that was recovered with Terry's fingerprints everywhere. Having just received an Emmy last year for his direction in Netflix's "Ozark," Jason Bateman does a magnificent job with the first two episodes of HBO's "The Outsider," establishing a definitive starkness for this compelling however imperfect adaptation of Stephen King's 2018 novel.
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