Lost Boys: The Tribe (2008)

Well, as much as they tried, the sequel to Joel Schumacher’s 1987 hit, The Lost Boys, did not make it into theaters but ended up going direct to DVD. Not a big shocker to anyone, I’m sure, but I finally got a chance to watch the film. Check out the trailer and then after the jump, check out my thoughts on Lost Boys: The Tribe, a film that really didn’t warrant as many words as I gave it.

Rating:

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First off, let me admit that I am not a big fan of 1987’s The Lost Boys. When it came out, I was in horror bliss with other, better films such as Evil Dead 2, A Nightmare On Elm Street 3 and Bad Taste. I felt The Lost Boys, at the time, was nothing more than a vampire flick for chicks. A water-downed horror flick starring a hair band with fake teeth. Over the years, I have seen the film on multiple occasions, and I can fully admit that there some things to like about the movie even with nostalgia being thrown out the window. The main thing being the cast. You had a group of young up-and-comers who I am not even going to go through the trouble to list, you had multiple plotlines dealing with separate subjects, and of course, the love story. All of this with a nice coat of paint in the form of Michael Chapman’s cinematography helps to to make The Lost Boys a little bit easier for me to get down the throat. It was a big hit and was supposed to spawn a sequel (entitled The Lost Girls) that never saw the light of day. But after many false starts, a sequel is here. Twenty years later. Direct to DVD. I would love to bash the shit out of the film, but in all honesty, the fact that it is a DTD release helps the score as that is exactly what it seems like you are watching. It’s not good, but it’s not as god-awful as I thought it would be. I’ve seen much worse this year (Dark Floors, anyone?).

The plot starts off ho-hum then steers straight into a coma. Chris Emerson (Tad Hilgenbrink), a pro surfer who has lost his sponsors after some actions he participated in, actions that were in response to the sudden death of his parents. Now on his own, broke and responsible for his 17-year-old sister, Nicole (Autumn Reeser), he travels to Luna Bay to live in a house being rented to them by an Aunt and hopefully get his life back on track. Immediately things start going to shit when Chris is approached by Shane (Angus Sutherland), a long-haired surfer who invites Chris to a party at his house that night. The siblings go, amid Chris’ reservations, and before you know it, Nicole is a half vampire and Chris must enlist the help of one Edgar Frog to save her before her soul is damned for all eternity. That’s basically it. The lack of any other story lines accounts for the lean runtime, which is a bonus I guess, but with the lack of interesting characters or subplots, the film does seem as dull as the opposite end of one of Edgar’s many stakes.

Speaking of Edgar, Corey Feldman reprises his role as Edgar Frog, who we find is now a loner, surfboard shaper and vampire slayer. To be honest, he is the main reason why I checked out the film. I am not a fan of his. Ever. Admittedly, I had secret hopes that he would come off silly, embarrassing and overall, ruin the film. I got the first two. The thing is, he is not even close to what is bad about the film. I actually cannot believe that Feldman was actually the BEST part of the film. That’s not saying he was good or anything, but I will say that at least his portrayal as Frog was mildly entertaining, especially with him using the fake voice and silly bandanna tied around the forehead. But he didn’t have much in way of competition, seeing as the script, the actors, and the effects were all petty bad. Tad and Autumn handle their roles ok and they do their jobs…but what kills the film is the absolutely horrendous tribe of vampires themselves.

The gang of suck monkeys…er, tribe…consists of a whore, an adrenaline junkie, a criminal and an injured pro surfer. Imagine Bodhi’s gang in Point Break, if that gang had been obnoxious frat boy assholes who could live forever. What an insufferable, unlikable, uncool group of vampires this film has. Aside from acting like drunken assholes, they sit in their lair playing Gears of War (no shit) and pull Jackass like pranks on each other to film and put up on the internet. These pranks don’t involve stapling post-its to ones ass, or punching each other while sleeping. These pranks include disembowelment and impaling each other with swords. It was a kind of interesting premise that just fails in the film. You ever watch a Youtube video of some guy doing something kinda stupid or cool, and the person behind the camera is laughing like a high pitched hyena? Yeah.

But even if you have a group of idiots, things can still be saved with a great head vampire, right? Maybe? Well, he is no Keifer, but Agnus Sutherland plays Shane, the leader of this group of bloodsucking misfits and like his subservient followers, he sucks much ass. He is not a good lead and does not come off one bit menacing much less the leader of the other four in the group. In fact, he is the worst of them all as whenever he starts talking, you will want to fall asleep. The thing with the first film, that also encompassed the vampires in it, was the fact that it had style. The original crew looked cool, kinda, yet still came off as menacing. This group? They act like douchebags when they are not vamped out, and they act like douchebags when they are. To top that off, the kills in the film are as lame as the vampires. They are killed with such relative ease, you KNOW that in the world of The Lost Boys, other vampire clans must have looked at Shane’s tribe like the The Gramercy Riffs in The Warriors looked at The Orphans. Bottom-of-the-Barrel, incompetent jackasses.

There are a few ties to the first film. One of them, the funniest, is a shot of a fat, homeless saxophone player shown in one of the opening montages. A direct jab at TIm Capecello, the buff, shirtless sax player in the original film. Edgar Frog’s brother, Alan, is mentioned by Edgar and one of the vampires who informs Edgar that they have him. Lastly, if you follow movie and celebrity gossip concerning the drug habits of D-list actors, or the “reality” show The Two Corey’s, then you are probably aware that Corey Haim, past teen-idol and one of the stars of the first film, has had a long standing battle with stupidity, douchebaggery and drug use. He was written into the movie after a little drama surrounding his decision whether he wanted to or not. Big shocker, he decided that he would. However his cameo in the film is at the very end and AFTER the credits start rolling, and is approximately 30 seconds long. If it wasn’t for his voice, you wouldn’t even know who it was. Rumor is he was fucked up, as usual, and they were only able to use what you see as he was unable to do his lines. This disastrous shoot can be viewed on Youtube for any of you who want to waste time with it. It seems as if they did some last minute re-tooling of the script in hopes of spawning more movies, possibly involving Feldman going to battle with future vampires. This is even more evident when watching the alternate endings located on the DVD. But as far as any more sequels go, I wouldn’t hold your breath.

Bottom line is that if you thought that P.J. Pesce, the director of From Dusk Til Dawn 3, was actually going to deliver anything remotely satisfactory in terms of a vampire film or ultimately, a follow up to a classic with a rabid fanbase…well, you are one extremely optimistic person. If this had been released in the theaters, anyone paying over a buck fifty would have a right to bitch about being ripped off. But seeing as it wasn’t, and went straight to video, anyone shelling out any dough for this should already know what they are getting. Personally, I had hoped that this would be so laugh-out-loud terrible that it would enter into my collection of guilty pleasures, but what I got was a fairly mediocore film not unlike any other Direct-to-Video release. As a sequel to The Lost Boys, Lost Boys: The Tribe is horrible.