This presents a tired post-apocalyptic world, devoid of interesting characters or unique situations, making it one of the year’s worst.
PLOT: A sorceress travels to the Lost Lands in search of a magical power that allows a person to transform into a werewolf.
REVIEW: Collaborations between Milla Jovovich and her husband Paul WS Anderson are the norm at this point. While we watched them create Resident Evil movies together for years, they’re now turning to the world of George RR Martin for their seventh collaboration. And with all that Game of Thrones hype behind him, you’d expect Martin to provide a new and interesting fantasy world for the two to play in. It’s funny what they say about assumptions, eh?
Jovovich stars as Gray Alys, a witch who is on a mission to find a werewolf who is murdering people. As much as the trailer makes it seems like something grander, that’s really all it is. She hires Boyce (Dave Bautista) to help her navigate the Lost Lands. Her power is feared, so she’s being hunted down by a group of bad guys, headed up by Ash. They’re hot on the trail of Gray and Boyce, with the intention of killing them before they reach their destination. The world is a pretty simple post-apocalyptic backdrop with a scale that really doesn’t make a lot of sense when you break it down. Almost feels like someone saw Dune and wanted to copy it.
Dave Bautista is his usual self and brings the film the only bit of life it can muster. Even then, the script does him no favors and no one really comes out of it unscathed. Boyce makes plenty of stupid decisions and comes across as a bit of a dummy. Then there’s Milla Jovovich who seems half interested most of the movie, completely clashing with the supposed stakes at hand. Given that her character of Gray Alys is intended to be the person that carries over from film to film, I can’t imagine why she’s so bland.
When it comes to a sci-fi/fantasy movie like this: I look for two things: the action and the worldbuilding. Seeing as how the world is just a green-screened Mad Max dystopia, no points in that category. But what about the action? I’d say this is where In The Lost Lands disappoints the most. I could not tell you a single action set piece outside of a train falling into a gorge, Back to the Future 3-style. Most of the hand-to-hand combat feels like something you’d see in 300. Which is fine for that film, but it’s been nearly 20 years and to say it’s a dated style would be a massive understatement.
It doesn’t help that In The Lost Lands is so dreadfully boring. Most of the film is just watching Boyce and Gray on their journey, but they don’t have an interesting dynamic with each other. And there are long stretches where it feels like we’re no closer to our end goal, and the script is simply throw obstacles in order to stretch the run time. This is made all the more frustrating when they then have to exposition dump at such a rapid pace it’ll make your head spin. So much information is dropped in a very small time frame, bringing up the obvious question of why couldn’t these things be revealed using nuance and inference versus simply having a character tell us everything verbatim. They’re trying to spoonfeed us like we’re babies and it does not work.
The aesthetic of In The Lost Lands feels like larger-than-life Mad Max, with its sprawling cities in total disarray and desert appearance. I was often reminded of Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon, with its stale CGI backdrops. For those unaware, comparisons to that film are never a good thing. There are some shots that look fine and others look like a bad videogame. As much as it’s trying to create a whole new world, this feels like one we’ve seen time and time again. And it doesn’t help that the greenscreen work looks like it belongs in a movie produced by Asylum, not a major studio.
I’m not sure what about this story intrigued George RR Martin enough to focus on this versus finishing up Winds of Winter, but it’s genuinely baffling. There’s not a hint of originality within the world and it feels like pieces of so many other (and better) science fiction and fantasy worlds. There’s a twist that occurs that feels so obvious, that it’s truly an insult to anyone with any modicum of intelligence. The fact that we missed out on Winds of Winter for this makes me dislike this movie even more.
I haven’t enjoyed a Paul WS Anderson movie in some time, so my expectations were already rock bottom yet even still it managed to disappoint. Not only is it one of the worst of the year, it sits firmly near the bottom of Anderson’s filmography. If anything, I just feel bad for Dave Bautista, who puts his all into his work, even when those around him seem to be going through the motions. Because as evidenced by Event Horizon nearly 30 years ago, the Anderson can make great cinema. It’s just been a long time since he reminded anyone of that.
IN THE LOST LANDS IS PLAYING IN THEATERS ON MARCH 7TH, 2025.
