Is there a more contentious team up right now than Paul W.S. Anderson and George R.R. Martin? The former has been on the cutting edge of infuriatingly idiotic blockbusters for decades now and somehow doesn’t seem to be getting any better at it despite once giving us the splendid Event Horizon – on the other hand, while Martin obviously took the world by storm thanks to the world famous HBO adaptation of A Song Of Fire And Ice (aka. Game Of Thrones), patience is at an all time low as the man still hasn’t delivered the next chapter of his epic book series and is presumably currently locked in a sudden death grudge match with Rockstar Games’ GTA series as to who can piss of their fans the most.
In a massively misguided way of possibly saying sorry, Anderson’s latest anniversary present to his wife, Milla Jovovich, is an adaptation of a short story by Martin that was first published back in the 80s. Can the irrepressible filmmaker manage to actually deliver the goods, or do we have yet another overwhelmingly shallow fantasy epic to wade through? Sorry folks, it’s not just the lands that are lost…
Once again we’re invited to enter a post apocalyptic world that looks like eight pounds of hammered shit long after a nuclear war decimated virtually everything. The remains of mankind, now live alternatively between an existence that veers between the middle ages and the Wild West and under the rule of the Overlord, constantly seem to be photogenically mining for something like the opening sequence of Koyaanisqatsi. On top of all that, a religious order made up of fanatics have launched a witch hunt because for some reason, witches are a thing that now exist and at the top of their hit list is a wish giving spellcaster known as Gray Alys.
After narrowly avoiding her own hanging thanks to funky hypno-powers, Alys is visited by the Queen who wants her to grant a request – to hunt down and trap a fabled werewolf (which also apparently exist) in order to drain its abilities and become all powerful. To do this, the witch has to get to the wolf’s stomping ground before the next full moon and only has a few days to do it in and her only hope to make it on time is to hire the services of burly hunter, Boyce, who is an expert in traversing the perilous Lost Lands.
As they make their journey, they’ll have to face many dangerous issues such as that pesky religious order being hot on their trail in their roaring death train and spikey, misshapen creature who live within the ruin of a nuclear power plant, but as the night of the full moon grows ever closer, both Alys and Boyce inevitably start to bond.
However, as multiple twists rear their heads like a two-headed snake, we begin to realise that the wishes that the witch are forced to grant may come with a terrible, monkey’s paw style repercussions. Whether or not they’ll cause more damage than a rampaging werewolf will remain to be seen…
I’m assuming, looking at the heavily stylised, ruined landscape of a future earth forced to go primal, Anderson was hoping to take the bronzed visuals of Zack Snyder’s 300 and blend it with the post apocalyptic lunacy of George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road – but while Martin’s utterly bonkers tale of witches, werewolves and radioactive mutants seems to owe just as much to Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series as it does to the man who created Game Of Thones, In The Lost Lands unwittingly seems to take its main influence from a much less glossy source. There’s many a time during this film that you’ll have to check yourself just to make sure you haven’t been zapped back 20-odd years or so to a time when mindless, painfully edgy, CGI fests ruled the land, most of which usually had either Anderson or Jovovich involved with it in some way. Ultraviolet, Priest, any of the Underworld movies you care to name and a fair few Resident Evil movies spring to mind too – In The Lost Lands joins their ranks seamlessly for all the wrong reasons as it muddles through it’s overly histrionic plot.
It’s actually a shame, because I actually found Anderson & Jovovich’s last collaboration, Monster Hunter, actually quite watchable for a change, although I freely admit that might have been because of the presence of massive Kaiju and Tony Jaa. Also, even though Jovovich still aquits herself as a convincing action hero, she’s technically still pulling the same, stern-faced shtick she’s been doing since the first Resident Evil – fuck, she’s even still called Alice (spelt Alys) for crying out loud and it’s not even the first time she’s played a witch either thanks to he stint in the Hellboy reboot.
Similarly, Dave Bautisa isn’t exactly stretching his talents either as a softly spoken badass who’s built like a tank, but at least he looks pretty cool as a dystopian gunslinger with an outlandish secret, but the two find it impossible to form any chemistry as they stand among the unfeasibly grim virtual backdrops that presumably think they’re metal as fuck, but actually are just quite dreary.
Also negatively affecting the viewing process is that fact that even for a dark fantasy film, In The Lost Lands is possibly the most random film you’re likely to ignore all year as George R.R. Martin apparently seemed desperate to show just how good the cocaine was back in the 80s. The fact that witches exist in a post apocalyptic future is one thing, but the movie never actually details what her nebulous abilities actually involve – which basically means she can do anything the plot needs her to do at any given moment. Also, the fact that the entire story hinges around a werewolf (whose origins are deliberately ignored lest the plot holes get so big they become a white dwarf) just seems so out of place I’m half tempted to believe it was just the laziest example of defeating writer’s block that I’ve ever seen. Stuck on a story? Fuck it, stick a werewolf in it.
The truly weird thing is that is In The Lost Lands was an anime or some other, Heavy Metal inspired animated feature, all the scattered randomness would actually be a benefit, but in Anderson’s hands, such tropes as Boyce using a two-headed snake as a security system and a fight on a cable car made out of a school bus just feels really silly.
If you miss the those types of films that go all out on spikey, computer generated visuals and doesn’t care if its world building makes any sense, then In The Lost Lands should be a fun trip down memory lane as Anderson and Martin throw witches, werewolves, gunslingers, nuclear mutants, religious fanatics and even a spot of Game Of Thones style intrigue. But after about half an hour of drinking it in, it all soon gets to be a little tiring thanks to the fact that Anderson can’t make all these elements even remotely fun. Once the film starts peppering you with those annoyingly smug and utterly dumb twists in the final act, you’re pretty much done and it seems that the only thing truly lost in these lands is the director’s quality control.
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