Wesley's Lost Boys: The Tribe Review

You see that poster above? Does anything about it spell out "good movie" to you? Yeah, me neither. 

I once again went into my new releases box at Movie Gallery this past Friday looking for this gem. I had seen the commercial for it the night before and was in the mood for an awful movie.

Let's just say that it did not disappoint.

Lost Boys: The Tribe is an absolutely terrible film that works an unnecessary semi-remake / sequel of the original cult classic that came out in the 1980's. It takes the creative style, good music, engaging story-telling, and solid cast (minus Corey Feldman, who not surprisingly is the only cast member from the first film to return to this crap fest- that is if you don't count what's after the credits... we'll get to that later) and throws it all out the window for more foul language, excessive gore, and loads of nudity. 

That's the first thing I noticed- the foul language. In the first few minutes of the film, it felt like at least fifty f-bombs were dropped. What was the point? It just all felt forced and added nothing to the movie. I'm all about going for the R-rating (especially lately in regards to a Robocop sequel and Terminator Salvation) but this all felt like it was put in to somehow to try to make this movie cooler. Well, it doesn't work. In fact, it just makes even more laughable and awful. The original Lost Boys had little-to-no foul language, a reasonable amount of gore, and no nudity at all. It was a fun movie that was effective and classy. Lost Boys: The Tribe has none of that class: it feels like a half-assed exploitation film starring people that look like they should be in The O.C. instead of this kind of film. The gore in this movie was ridiculous and it was all filmed in a strange fast motion, shaky manner (i.e. unoriginal) that I guess was supposed to be shocking and hard-hitting. Instead, it just felt out of place and strange. And what was with all the nudity? Again, if it serves the movie, then I'm fine with it. However, after a while, I felt like I was watching one of the American Pie films or even a porno. 

Speaking of American Pie, that was another thing- the main male human lead was played by the same guy that played Stifler's brother one of those straight-to-DVD (*cough* STD *cough*) sequels to American Pie. I never saw that movie but, having seen the previews for it, I recognized the kid pretty fast. I guess he gets a lot of work on the STD market. Once I realized who he was, it was all that I could think about and, thus, I couldn't take anything he said or did seriously. He's just one of those Stifler kids.

The cast for this film was terrible. One of the great things about the original Lost Boys was that it had a pretty solid cast, especially in the case of Kiefer Sutherland as bad guy David. Well, this time they manage to get Kiefer's half-brother Angus Sutherland to be the bad guy and guess what? He doesn't have the acting abilities, presence, look, or ink of talent that Kiefer had. The guy is just embarrassing and has no intimidation factor once so ever. Autumn Reeser plays our female lead struggling with first-time vampirism and, while she's nice to look at, there isn't much to say about her acting abilities (though I wouldn't say that she was awful by any means). The rest of the vampires in the film are absolutely character-less. Seriously, I could not tell you one of their names or anything special about them. They were all just assholes that cursed a lot and ate people. There was nothing to make you identify with them or really even care that they were there. But to me, the most unforgivable casting decision on this film was getting make-up legend / horror icon Tom Savini to make an appearance and then just completely wasting him. Savini shows up in the first five minutes of the film and is quickly disposed of by our lame, jerk-off surfer dude vampires. What's up with that? Tom Savini is absolutely awesome and you treat him like this? He should have been the head vampire instead. Now that's a Lost Boys movie that I would have liked to see.

And now we get to good ole' Cory Feldman. To me, Feldman was one of the worst parts of the original Lost Boys because of that lame deep voice that he would force himself to speak in to try to sound like a bad-a. It was just embarrassing. Well, not as embarrassing as an adult version of himself speaking in the same phoney voice. Say what you will about Bale's "Batman" voice but it's got nothing on the awfulness of Feldman's Edgar Frog voice. Still, with that said, I did actually really enjoy Feldman's presence in this film (and that's something I'd never thought I'd say). Despite the lame forced voice, Edgar Frog is a fun character and he begins a lot of humor and entertainment to the film. Plus, he has a bunch of extremely cheesy / awesome one-liners like "Who ordered the stake?" after he shows up with two stakes with intent to use them on some vampires and "Pop goes the wheezel" after blowing up a vampire's head with a shotgun blast. Yeah, they are all really bad but, deep down, I loved them. It is truly sad though that Feldman seemed to believe in this film so much (as is evident in his multiple blog posts) to the point of trying to get enough fan support to gain a theatrical release. There's no way this thing would have lasted in theaters. So much about it screams straight-to-DVD. I don't know what you were thinking, Corey. I don't know how you could have thought this was looking good. Poor guy.

You may be asking: what about this movie just screams straight-to-DVD? Well, I'll tell you. First off, the direction is completely sub-standard. I don't know who director P.J. Pesce is but there's nothing about the way he films that would make him any more different than the average straight-to-DVD director. The way he stages action is completely unengaging and strange. After watching the movie, I watched some of the special features on the DVD just because I was wondering how they could say good things about the film. One feature was dedicated to a really lame action sequence in the film where the vampires run from a police car on various "extreme" forms of transportation such as motorcycles and skateboards. While I appreciate some of the stunt work that was done, the way the scene is filmed is so uninteresting and awkward. He uses shaky takes a lot (why is this a style?) and, at times, randomly speeds the footage up. The execution (and the retarded set-up) of this scene is so unbelievably poorly done. I really didn't even understand why this sequence was taking place. It just felt so forced and unrealistic. I didn't buy it for one second. 

Other than the bad action sequences, the film also contains some truly bad "shooting day for night" sequences. In case you don't know what this means, sometimes filmmakers shoot night sequences during the day and then change the color of the sky to black in post-production. The lighting of these scenes is usually off a little bit but, if done properly, it can trick the audience. However, this is not the case in Lost Boys: The Tribe. The night sky that was transplanted in these scenes always looked really fake and painfully obvious. It was just bad. It really stood out during the night surfing sequences, especially at the beginning of the film. And what was up with putting in that giant moon? There's a lot of shots of a giant full moon in this film that is so unrealistically big that it seems like it's about to crash into the Earth. What were they thinking?

To go along with all these complaints, there were also a lot of plot holes and scenes of just general confusion in this film. For example, there's one scene in particular where the Stifler kid is in a car with the vampires and they decided to go surf at night. To this, the Stifler kid replies, "But there's no moon tonight. How will we be able to see?" Cut to a few minutes later and they're all surfing... with that giant freaking moon in the night sky! But he just said there was no moon... how did you guys miss that? They even went in so far as to put a giant fake moon in the sky. I just don't get it. Also, at one point in the movie, Feldman talks about making "Frog juice," which he drinks every morning when he wakes up and night when he goes to sleep. It contains raw eggs, garlic, and some form of alcohol (can't remember which one). He also has created a bola of garlic to throw at vampires. But wait a minute... I seem to remember a scene in the original Lost Boys when an attacking vampire tells Edgar Frog that garlic doesn't work! That's right, he told Feldman's character that garlic has no effect on vampires. Yet, despite this, he still drinks it and uses it as a weapon? I smell a plot hole. 

Lastly, a lot of scenes in this movie just don't make sense. Characters will meet characters that they obviously have had some type of history with and conflict ensues... but we never get an explanation of their history. The last thing I expected to be was confused during the viewing of this film. Constantly, Feldman refers to having lost a family member. Well, I guess he's referring to Allan Frog, his brother... but we never are given any explanation of this. Um, what happened to storytelling, guys? Way to leave me out here. After all, I tend to care more about the Frog brothers and characters from the first film than all these new stereotypical ones any way... yet, you keep that whole story-line vague and secret. Come on, what's wrong with you? And what's up with that scene during the credits with another character from the first film (I guess I'll leave it secret for spoiler reasons, though most people know about it before seeing the film)? I had no idea what they were talking about in this scene. And why was that certain character a vampire now? Please, someone, inform me of the reasoning behind all this. And another thing- what's up with those alternate endings? They have a scene between Feldman and the aforementioned character from the first film as well, though in a much different context, and a strange and somewhat lame cameo of Allan Frog. Did things have to be this confusing? Couldn't the movie just have been focused on these characters instead? 

Still, despite all this awfulness, I did enjoy this movie. After all, I rented the thing because I wanted to watch a bad movie. And that's what I got. I have to tell you- this movie was pretty hilarious to watch. Despite it being a worse movie, I actually enjoyed watching this more than I did watching Doomsday. It was just so bad that it was really funny. I couldn't stop laughing when lame redone version of "Cry Little Sister" by Aiden was played. It was just so laughably bad. I can't believe that they actually just re-enacted the sex scene from the first film with it playing, using the exact same lightly, cross fades, and direction. It was just so blatant that it was hysterical. It was a really fun time, I must admit. It would actually make a great group film if you're friends with people that love watching and making fun of bad films. It's perfect for that.

This movie really had nothing to say for itself. Everything about it was done before and insanely predictable. I'm still not sure why it was even made. After all the rumors of Lost Boys sequels (such as the ever popular Lost Girls), they settled on this uninspired piece of dung? Why? Bad acting, bad directing, bad music, bad effects, bad script... everything was just bad, bad, bad. This movie was so awful that it was actually one of the funniest movies that I've seen in quite a while. I never thought I'd ever say this in a sentence but, man, Joel Schumacher did a much better job. 

I'm sorry, Corey- this movie was terrible.

2/10