First let me get this out of my system: Erin Brown is butt-naked in the first 5 seconds of this movie. Also, who taught her to act? I keep telling you people ever since that Masters of Horror episode the chick can act all of a sudden.
At any rate, it is a real shame that Hollywood is too busy jerking around with stupid remakes, because Clive Barker has at least 5 to 10 decent short stories from The Books of Blood that would make great movies, but instead all we get is a shitty Tales From the Darkside episode, Rawhead Rex from over 20 years ago, and the upcoming Midnight Meat Train. Meanwhile another great horror author, Jack Ketchum, is stuck with his film adaptations going straight to DVD. It is kind of like forcing Beethoven to play at a dive bar.
Hot off the heels of The Girl Next Door, Ketchum’s The Lost is his next book to get the film treatment. Unlike the former, however, this one essentially belongs on the straight to DVD market, not because of Ketchum’s story but because of the movie itself. The narrative carries the film; it is the direction and everything else that holds it back. It reminded me of all those direct to DVD serial killer films that were all the rage in the early 2000s. If you have seen Bundy or The Hillside Strangler then you know exactly what I mean. With that said, The Lost is not awful. It is definitely worth Ketchum fans’ attention, and may be one of the better direct to DVD films this year.
Another demented coming of age tale (think Stand By Me where the kids actually do the killing), The Lost follows bored suburban kids gone wrong. Ray Pye is a creepy goon who puts crushed beer cans in his boots to look taller and suffers from violent hissy fits towards women. When he runs into two campers (Erin Brown) who he deems lesbians, his friends learn how deep his hatred for the female gender goes as he dispatches the “dykes” with his .22 rifle. Four years later, when one of the two girls finally dies after spending time in a coma, detective Detective Charlie Schilling (Michael Bowen) can’t let the unsolved case go, especially since he knows Pye was behind the murders, which is something he has never been able to prove. It is just a matter of time before Pye loses control again, and when he finally does, the blood really flies in one of the best violent temper tantrums in recent memory.
Marc Center pulls off a decent Ray Pye, especially because he really looks the part. On the other hand, Robin Sydney (Katherine the sassy new girl from San Francisco) may look great but is as sexy as Alicia Silverstone was in The Crush. A nice pair of tits and cute ass just isn’t enough. Sexy is harder to pull off then most people think, and Sydney proves it in this role, or maybe it has something to do with director Chris Siverston. We are talking about the man that was able to make Lindsay Lohan as a stripper boring, after all.
Despite all this, The Lost is a great chapter in what I hope is a long line of Jack Ketchum movies. The fact that this is more thriller than horror shouldn’t really scare away horror fans; Ray Pye is enough of a human monster to file this away with movies like Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. There is also enough T&A for our resident perverts who were of course wondering if they should rent this or not. While not an instant fucked-up classic like Henry, The Lost is definitely worth bumping to the top of your Netflix queue.
