#29: Lost Boys: The Tribe

Lost Boys: The Tribe
Directed by PJ Pesce
Written by Hans Rodionoff (based on characters by Janice Fischer and James Jeremias)
Released July 29, 2008


Look at the date listed above. You know you're dealing with a real turd when I'm watching a movie, at home, on its date of release. Straight to video, baby!

Back in 1987, when I was 11 years old, my mother took my older brother and me to see the original The Lost Boys, a damn good, scary and fun modern vampire movie starring Jason Patric, Kiefer Sutherland, and of course, Corey Haim and Corey Feldman. In the original, Patric and Haim played brothers who moved with their mother to the fictional town of Santa Clara, CA. They soon discover that Santa Clara is a hotbed for vampires.

The Lost Boys was pretty much a cultural phenomenon: the introduction of "the two Coreys" to preteen girls everywhere, the first name-making performance by Jason Patric (no, Solarbabies does not count) and easily the best movie Joel Schumacher ever directed (dude has made about 27 movies and you can count the halfway decent ones on the fingers of a single hand).

(Side note: Schumacher drove two giant nails into the coffin of the previous series of Batman movies when he made the awful Batman Forever and the fucking terrible Batman & Robin.)

With Lost Boys: The Tribe it's almost as if the Batman-era Schumacher went back to his one really great film and made the most stupid version of it he could possibly make.

The plot is virtually the same. Do you remember when they made Teen Wolf 2, and the "plot" was virtually identical? They just made the wolf a boxer instead of a basketball player. This is just like that, except instead of making the protagonists Jason Patric and Corey Haim, they use Joe and Joanne Fucking Nobody.

The truly creepy Keifer Sutherland is replaced by his boring younger brother Angus, who "acts" like the love child of Ryan Phillipe and Hayden Christensen, and I mean that in the worst way. The bad guy motorcycle gang is replaced by the bad guy extreme sports enthusiasts. Quotable dialogue like "My own brother, a goddamn, shit-sucking vampire. You wait 'till mom finds out!" is replaced with inane insults like, "Stop walkin' like a fag," or, even worse, quotes from other movies or even rehashed entire scenes from the original.

The only element both movies share (beyond the aforementioned purloined dialogue) is Corey Feldman's vampire hunting pseudo Rambo, Edgar Frog. And really, if Feldman is all you've got to hold this whole thing together... you ain't got much, buddy.

Granted, Feldman gives what is easily the best performance in the movie, which is still pretty terrible. Put up against the rest of this cast, that's nothing to brag about. Some of the effects and stunts are decent, but that almost raises a more depressing issue: someone spent money on this.

I have to mention as a severe tangent: there's a scene in the vampire crew's lair where a character is thrown onto a table, and if you blink, you'll miss the fact that he lands on a bag of Baked Lays potato chips. Really, if you're immortal, are you gonna eat a bag of Baked Lays? I mean, aside from the fact that vampires don't need food, what's the fucking point of being immortal if you can't eat all the greasy food you want?

That's how lame these vampires are: they diet.

For those of you who witnessed the Corey Haim meltdown on A&E's The Two Coreys and wondered exactly what footage of him filming his part for this movie was salvageable, apparently none, as he does not appear in the film proper. However, put up with this bullshit sequel long enough to get through the credits and you'll catch a small clip featuring Haim and Feldman that teases a possible second installment.

Yay. Lucky us.


For more on Lost Boys: The Tribe (Really? You want to know more?):
- Movie information at IMDB and Wikipedia
- The official movie site

The trailer, from YouTube:



This, however, is WAY more interesting: