Joel Schumacher's 1987 horror-comedy The
Lost Boys became
a cult phenomenon via a zeitgeist-conscious blend of dark comedy, MTV glam, and
erotic gothic brooding. It hit in the moment before emo became a pop punchline
and vampires slunk and postured their way into every possible genre and medium.
The cultural landscape has changed considerably since then, but the belated
direct-to-DVD sequel Lost Boys: The Tribe never tries to find a similar anchor in
current trends. Instead, it offers up low-rent mimicry of the first Lost
Boys,
with cheaper actors, cinematography, effects, and music. Then it compensates
with copious gore and bare tits. Granted, there's an audience for boobs and
blood no matter what the era, but this halfhearted package offers little else.
In a plot familiar from the first film, a
pair of pretty siblings move to a California beach town, where they're
semi-supported by a cantankerous older relative and targeted by a pack of sexy
vampires. This time, the younger sibling (Autumn Reeser) is female, and the
older one (Tad Hilgenbrink) is creepily overprotective, to the point of abandoning
a partner, mid-fuck, to go check on her. When broody head vamp Angus Sutherland
(half-brother of Lost Boys' Kiefer) claims Reeser for his pack of
biker-surfer-jock-dork bloodsuckers, Hilgenbrink enlists the aid of Corey
Feldman, doing his best growly Christian-Bale-as-Batman voice while reprising
his Lost Boys
role as a comics freak and vampire hunter.
Feldman gives the film a touch of
self-aware camp, but otherwise, it's a dismally humorless collection of puerile
thrills—two drunk girls kiss, the vampires engage in messy murder, and so
forth. There's a brief attempt to probe the power-trip wish-fulfillment of
vampirism, but eternal youth among Sutherland's coterie of dim, yo-bro
eternal-adolescent douches seems more irritating than glamorous. And The
Tribe's
sense of cool consists of desperately winking references to the first film,
right down to the prominently placed cover of "Cry Little Sister." In a closing
scene and two brief "alternate endings," cameos from Corey Haim and Feldman's Lost
Boys brother
Jamison Newlander tease a possible Lost Boys 3. In the wake of this
near-anonymous cheapie horror flick, that's hardly a compelling prospect.
Key
features: A
negligible five-minute making-of, and an irritating Feldman-narrated vampire
survival guide.