Emrabt Reviews

Lost Boys: The Thirst (2010 Video)

A genuine, but flawed attempt to continue the characters stories.

[12 October 2010]

In an interview after The Tribe Feldman said he had taken the criticism on board, and as producer he would address all of it. well, it seems he actually DID. Don't get me wrong, this is still a low budget badly acted DVD movie, but this time they've done a lot of stuff right. It is much better than The Tribe, but it does have some vital ingredients missing causing it to end up being similar in style to John carpenters vampires.

Many people will be pleased to know that there's no "XTREAM" "with it" "youtube generation" surfing vampires. The vampires here are properly updated for today, but unfortunately you don't get to see much of them, even in THE TRIBE we had a chance to meet some of the gang and they came across as mildly threatening, in this movie they pretty much keep to themselves.

Most of the plot revolves around Edgar Frog, his warped childlike obsession with vampire hunting, it occasionally brushes up on the emotional losses of Edgar's friends and there is also a bit of time used to unravel the twisted mess The Tribe left the series in. While the storyline has much more substance than the predecessor it still leaves a lot to be desired, many of the new additions are under written and could have been flesh out a bit more. They did at least try this time, there's a plot twist, which, due to casting was a bit disappointing and one which you can see coming as soon as we're given the pieces to put it together, I was happy to take any kind of plot twist over what the tribe gave us.

The highlight is Jamieson Newlander's extended Cameo as Alan frog, he has a small part but manages to steal the show and left me wanting much more. Don't expect this movie to be the reunion of the frog brothers; they don't go raiding the vampires den together or anything, all Newlander gets is three present day scenes, one newly filmed flashback and some flashbacks to the original movie.

Feldman seems to have slightly toned down his over the top performance, he still hams it up as Edgar, but this time the whole cast seem to be having fun, something lacking from The Tribe. Missing from both the lost boys sequels is any younger kids or teens, In the original movie the kids were written for comic relief, acting like brave men, being the accidental heroes and brave in the face of danger, here because there's no kids, a lot of the comedy is missing. It seems Lost kids don't become vampires anymore.

The movie manages to not take itself too seriously and does get a very small glimmer of an 80's campy movie feel in a few places, though not enough to compare with anything from the original. If you have sat through other Straight to DVD action / Horror movies, you pretty much know what to expect with the acting and pacing (or rather lack of).

To sum things up, The Thirst genuinely attempted to be a follow up rather than a low budget retelling, it's nothing spectacular but it's worth at least one watch.

Lost Boys: The Tribe (2008 Video)

Soft-Core Porno spoof of the first movie.

[19 July 2008]

Nobody expected this movie to be great, but it is truly awful. My advice would be to Skip it and go straight to The Thirst, this adds nothing to the plot or character development. It seem to mix up Sam Emerson's character with Alan frog, having vampires mention Edgar's brother a few times, then having a 20 second cameo in the end credits with Corey Haim.

The first low point, for me anyway, was the amount of swearing in the opening few minutes, it begins right after the Warner logo and is totally unneeded. The next big problem is the updated vampires, they aren't cool, not in the slightest, in an attempt to be "XTREAM" and "with it" these vampires stab each other and upload it to youtube. The creators obviously had no clue about the audience of this movie, maybe they didn't realise that the fans that saw the original are now Corey Felmans age. That's the beauty of the original it spans almost 3 generations, something the creators of this movie didn't know, thinking the audience would be comprised of self harmers and sex crazed 13 year olds.

The story itself plodded along slowly for the first 40 or 50 minutes, it's essentially an unenthusiastic remake of the original. It tried half heartedly to be a lost boys movie, It ended up copying many of the events from the first one. The script writer has taken most of the scenes from the original mixed them up and wrote some new lines of dialogue to glue them together. The "Magic" isn't there. It's missing a plot twist and some well needed lovable characters (maybe it's that lack of younger teens?). You also have Feldman over acting his heart out in an attempt to compensate for some of the other actors. It doesn't save the movie, but it is the highlight, in fact I cheered at the T.V when he appeared. Feldman's role is the same as in the first movie, right down to the dialogue, line for line in some places.

Many of the actors look bored, when being attacked by vampires most of the cast look like they're waiting for a bus. This brings me to another complaint, there is way too many over the top sex scenes crammed into this, I have no problems with sex scenes in movies, you expect it in horror movies, but when the two main cast members start having sex with everything on two legs, your movie is a porno. At the halfway point we are "treated" to a slow misplaced police chase scene, followed by the characters sleeping and a driving to the beach, nicely killing off any kind of momentum the movie had built up. There's a cool weapons talk in Edgar frogs van, where he explains all the vampire killing equipment, but this only leads to an end battle which fall flat on its face.

There is no plot twist or clever writing of any kind in this movie. I will not be sitting through it again, once is more than enough.