Outlast: Netflix’s wild new reality show makes TVNZ’s Treasure Island look like a day out in Auckland Domain

REVIEW: “Come out, or we pop your inner-tubes.”

It’s the moment in the initial scene-setting montage that confirms that Netflix’s new reality competition is going to make our own Treasure Island feel like a nice day out in Auckland Domain.

Unfolding over eight episodes, Outlast (which begins streaming tonight, Friday, March 10, from 9pm) might boast a far more significant prize than anything TVNZ might be able to come up with (US$1m), but the privations the 16 contestants have to endure are a bit more severe than anything Matty McLean or Lance Savali came up against in either Fiji or Northland.

Here, the chosen few are dropped into the middle of the unforgiving Alaskan wilderness with only the clothes on their back. The rainforest that surrounds Neka River is known for high rainfall, rapidly dropping temperatures and a dense population of bears.

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With the participants arriving late afternoon deep into Autumn, that means the ursines are at their most active as hibernation beckons, while there’s only an hour left before the sun sets and it’s around 0 degrees Celsius for the next 12 or so hours. That means there’s no time to waste to erect a shelter, establish a heart source – oh, and split themselves into four teams.

Yes, as they hit the ground, the already daunting proposition gets even more nightmarish for these self-confessed “lone wolf survivalists”. In order to win, they’ll have work together as part of a pack. Because that’s the only rule of Outlast – you have to be a member of a team to win. From the look upon some of the five women and 11 men’s faces at that news, there appeared to be instant regret about what they’d signed up for.

However, going home for the likes of a Florida high school wrestling coach, a Texas vacation planner, a Kentucky private investigator, a recovered heroin addict from Arizona and a young guy whose only skills are what he learned from the Discovery Channel, is both complicated – and fiendishly simple.

There are no oversized wooden puzzles, no tug-of-wars, no voting off. In fact, there are no eliminations at all – apart from self-eliminations. The only way out is to quit, by shooting a flare into the sky.

Individual guns that allow them to do that form part of the initial cargo drop for each of the somewhat reluctantly assembled quartets. There’s also a hatchet, knife, blanket, tarpaulin, flashlight, flint, first aid kit, two mugs and the all-important bear spray. What there isn’t is food – of any kind. Not even water or “pantry staples” – and certainly no prospect of a smug host in khaki coming in to offer them a “Maccas run”.

As the foursomes scramble to create some kind of a place to sleep and way of staving off the cold in what little daylight remains, our somewhat portentous (and slightly smug) narrator informs us that at least one group’s “stubborness has cost them valuable time”.

Cue an evening of empty bellies, cold butts and copious complaints. While there are complaints in one team about a micro-manager, spirits are generally still high, until a rainstorm that could last a week sweeps in and someone picks up a vomiting bug (Yes, if you thought McLean fainting on Treasure Island was high unbearably high drama, you’d better brace yourself for a white-knuckle ride here).

It’s Day 2 and up goes flare No.1, followed the next day by two more – a pair of young blokes (including the survival show obsessive) who simply decided this “challenge” wasn’t really for them (“My gut is telling me they’re no great loss,” one of their former team-mates tells the cameras dismissively).

It means though, almost a fifth of the competitors have been culled – and the teams haven’t even left their camps yet.

They know, however, that they will eventually (and pretty soon) all have to venture out and compete for whatever food resources they can find. A second air drop of components and tools that could help them create a raft offers a lifeline, but that’s also when the physical and mental mind games begin, as that opening quote – and this next one – suggest: “This isn’t about surviving, it’s about who’s the meanest.”

Yes, this is very much car-crash television, as personalities clash and the less-than-salubrious environment begins to take its toll.

It shouldn’t make for riveting viewing and yet somehow it does, especially as the creators (one of whom is Ozark’s Jason Bateman) underplay a lot of the tension and don’t endlessly signpost things the way other reality competitions do.

Really, you just never know when – or where – the next flare will come from – and damn it if you don’t find yourself hooked on finding out who will be the next to go and who will take home that crazily large amount of cash.

Outlast begins streaming on Netflix on the evening of Friday, March 10.