Released: 2008
Starring: Tad Hilgenbrink, Angus Sutherland, Autumn Reeser, Corey Feldman
Director: P.J. Pesce
Distributed by: Warner Bros.
Rated: R (UK – 18)
“Never grow old. Never die. Never know fear again.”
I love The Lost Boys.
If you saw my last review, you know that I love The Lost Boys. You might also know that I love monster movies, vampires, horror flicks, 80s films…Lost Boys seemed tailor-made for me and I’m still kicking myself for wasting twenty-five years of not watching that movie. I love the plot, the humour, the costume choices, the music…I love everything about it. Basically, if you gave me a movie about a potato with a mullet that whispered “Michael” repeatedly into the night and called it a Lost Boys film, I would still love it…or so I thought.
I was on such a Lost Boys kick that I went in search of more things to satisfy my craving for ’80s, glam-punk vampires. I looked for similar films. I watched behind the scenes footage online. I even read the novelization of the movie. Imagine my surprise, however, when I went to purchase the film and found that – for just a few dollars on Amazon – I could have all three of the Lost Boys movies on Blu-ray together.
Yes, you read that correctly. Three.
Lo and behold, after my desperate search, it turns out that there are two more movies for me to watch! A whole, untapped goldmine of dirt-biking vampires just waiting to be revealed! I was thrilled! I added that shit to my cart pronto.
While waiting for it to be delivered, I did some reading up on the movies. The only consistent character and actor across The Lost Boys and Lost Boys: The Tribe seemed to be Corey Feldman (Stand By Me and The Goonies) who played ‘Edgar Frog, vampire hunter’ just as he did in the first film. I’m a fan of the Frog brothers, so I was excited to see this. Jamison Newlander (The Blob) and Corey Haim (License to Drive and Lucas) were also listed in the cast as Alan Frog and Sam Emerson respectively, but their scenes were, apparently, deleted.
Okay. That’s okay. Corey Feldman is still in there, so we are on a roll so far. As soon as I pop the movie in, I notice the quality. The filming looks off. Things are tinted oddly and it looks a little bit like a soap opera. I quickly figure out it’s a direct-to-video movie. Alright, that’s okay too. It could still be good.
The movie opens with a group of boys filming each other messing about on some cliffs. Sex Machine from Quentin Tarantino’s From Dusk Til Dawn waltzes out and tells them to get off his property. So Tom Savini (From Dusk ‘Til Dawn and Dawn of the Dead) is in this movie! Awesome! The boys give him trouble, he turns into a vampire, so do they, and they eat him. End intro. Next scene.
A boy and girl – Chris and Nicole – are driving to a seemingly abandoned house together because they are…moving there. The boy I recognize. A quick Google search and I find why he’s so familiar – his name is Tad Hilgenbrink and he’s from American Pie Presents Band Camp. Interesting choice for a horror film, but the first movie did have a twisted sort of sense of humour, so I’m still alright with it. Nicole – who I find out is Chris’ little sister – is played by Autumn Reeser (The OC) and that is just about all the info I can gather about her. The two of them have no defining qualities, nor am I really sure what their mission is in this movie. After a while, I have gathered that their mother has passed away (I think) and that they are moving into a property that their aunt owns.
Sidenote about the aunt: Gabrielle Rose (A Dog’s Purpose) plays Aunt Jillian. This is the first instance I see of characters being built as a direct parallel to the original movie. Aunt Jillian has many stringent rules and is oddly oblivious throughout the movie to any of the strange, supernatural occurrences. She seemed absolutely not bothered by things that should bother a typical person. It took me until the end to realize she was meant to be the ‘grandfather’ character in this movie.
The audience is told, through forced conversation and cringe-worthy acting, that the last name of our main characters is ‘Emerson’. Oh my! Like Sam and Michael Emerson from the first movie? Yes! Do they mention that at all? Of course not.
For some reason, perhaps to find a surfboard or something, Chris is sent to ‘The Frog Brothers’ place of business. I must say this: to see the Frog brothers’ trailer for the first time was enthralling. It’s been a long time since the audience has seen the little kids running the comic shop, and I was excited to see how they’d grown up. The trailer is adorned with crosses sharpened into stakes, garlic leis, signs claiming that vampires are ‘not invited’, and the whole property is surrounded by a circle of salt. It turns out that no one is home, however, so Chris leaves a note and they leave.
Nicole insists on going to a party that night. I forgot to mention that Chris used to be a famous surfer and his arch-rival lives in the town. The arch-rival is Shane, played by Angus Sutherland (November Criminals) who also seems to obviously be the ‘head’ vampire in this movie. He’s the ‘David’, which is fitting, really, because Angus Sutherland is the little brother of Kiefer Sutherland who played David in the first film. Angus is actually pretty good. He sounds like Kiefer and has the same, creepy, commanding, ‘high school bully’ feeling to him that Kiefer has, so I liked him as the bad boy vampire. He seduces Nicole and gives her ‘wine’ to drink (sound familiar?) and then Chris gets angry and they leave.
It was around this time that my husband, who was a trooper up to this point, decided to go to bed. He didn’t deem the movie worth finishing. So be it. I continued on by myself.
Nicole gets violently ill on the way home and Chris tucks her in, but a sexy vampire woman pays him a visit, presumably so she can eat him. As soon as she starts to attack him, however, she’s hit in the head with a surfboard from behind and the audience is presented with Edgar Frog: Vampire Hunter and Surfboard Shaper.
Edgar’s entrance was amazing. In fact, most things Corey Feldman did in this movie were amazing. He played Edgar exactly the same as he did in the first movie. He was full of serious attitude, a strange, deep voice, and ridiculous one-liners. I loved every second he was on screen. My favourite part was when they were driving to go kill some vampires and he’s in the passenger seat of the car blessing water balloons and explaining that he’s a minister now. He took an online course. That technically makes him the Reverend Minister Edgar Frog: Vampire Hunter and Surfboard Shaper.
Shane’s tribe is a collection of ‘lost souls’ that he ‘saved’ by giving them a better life. Nicole wants to join them. They decide that Chris should pretend to be one of them and then betray them at the last minute in some sick rip-off of Mean Girls. Needless to say, this doesn’t work, and we are treated to an ‘Edgar Frog special’ of packing himself up with various rigged weapons dealing with holy water and garlic and then storming the castle to defeat Shane.
Overall, this movie was not good. I was looking forward to seeing how the Frog Brothers had grown, but Alan wasn’t in the movie. Even if he was, it would not have salvaged all the other things wrong with the film. The acting was nearly unbearable. The plot was strange and lacking detail. The characters were not likable, nor memorable, and it didn’t seem to have been created in the same spirit of the first film. Although there was a tiny appearance of Corey Haim as Sam at the end of the movie, no mentions of the original were made.
As David said in Lost Boys, “My blood is in your veins.” It’s true that the vampires in this movie followed canon set up by the original, but the whole thing seemed forced and seemed to be made almost without care. Edgar was the only direct line from the first to the second, and it was Feldman’s performance that made this tolerable for me. Michael’s response seems appropriate here as well. “So is mine!” he cried out in rebellion. If only this movie had a little less of its own blood in its veins and a little more of the original’s.
Rating:
Fool on the Hill:
Do I regret watching it? No. Is it the worst movie I’ve ever seen? No. Will I ever watch it again? Maybe…for Corey Feldman. Was the fat, balding, aged version of the greased up saxophone man from the boardwalk a hilarious throwback to the first movie? Absolutely, but those two seconds shouldn’t have been a highlight of the film.
Bottom line: if you are a die-hard fan of Lost Boys, go ahead and watch it, but don’t expect it to be anything close to the original.
Leave a Reply