Overall Rating
 Awesome: 44.68%
Worth A Look: 26.6%
Average: 17.02%
Pretty Bad: 9.57%
Total Crap: 2.13%
4 reviews, 70 user ratings
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| Lost Boys, The |
by Rob Gonsalves
"Motherfucker, I'm tryin' to watch 'Lost Boys'!"
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So there we were, browsing the shelves for a horror flick. And there it was: "The Lost Boys." Normally we would've kept browsing. But Corey Haim had just died. So there we were, watching "The Lost Boys."It hasn't aged well. At all. Aside from a cool cover of "People Are Strange" by Echo and the Bunnymen, the soundtrack is precisely the wrong kind of '80s cheese — lots of synth and drum machine, no soul. And that pretty well describes the movie, too. If you were young enough to be part of the movie's target audience in '87, you might've thought it was totally rad. I somehow missed it back then, and only caught snippets on cable over the years. So this was my first time with The Lost Boys. As a time-capsule piece and a gallery of ridiculous hair, it's fitfully amusing. As a horror film it blows up on the launch pad. I'm more of a Fright Night fan myself.
The late, lamented Corey co-stars with his fellow Corey (Feldman), in the first of several collaborations. I know I should've been feeling a pang of sadness watching him as a teenager battling with demons, but I didn't really make the connection. The movie doesn't, either; it loses sight of its own potentially intriguing subtext. A bunch of motorcycle-riding vampires are terrorizing Santa Clara, seducing Corey's older brother (Jason Patric) into their fold. The film's memorable tagline went "Sleep all day. Party all night. Never grow old. Never die. It's fun to be a vampire." The movie never quite delivers on that last promise. Kiefer Sutherland, as the vamp we take to be the leader, exudes a certain bored decadence, but in this movie being a vampire isn't much different from being an average j.d., other than the bloodsucking bit.
We don't feel that it must be fun to be a vampire; no, that would make the film interesting. Instead, vampires are the usual outside threat to the dull nuclear family, though mom Dianne Wiest is divorced and moving herself and her sons in with her hash-addled old dad (Barnard Hughes). The Lost Boys lacks any subversive kick; Blackboard Jungle was more dangerous. There's maybe a shaky bit of symbolism in the vamps' turning Patric by encouraging him to drink from a bottle of blood (just say no! friends don't let friends drink and bite!), but for the most part the youth angle is simply there to put teenage asses in seats. It's not commenting on anything. So for The Lost Boys to work at all, it has to work as straight horror, but Joel Schumacher's direction makes everything weightless, easily digested and shat out. Sutherland is allowed a few eerie moments — as with his Ace in Stand by Me, he's of the school that quieter is scarier — but the rest of the vamps, including future Bill & Ted star Alex (billed as Alexander) Winter, are laughable mullet mannequins.
The early scenes on the neon-seared boardwalk in Santa Clara, where vampires come out at night and go unremarked, set a promising mood. But before long the movie gets away from that carny atmosphere, and we get a lot of fog or tedious daylight scenes. It doesn't help that the key factor in Patric's seduction is vamp tramp Jami Gertz, perhaps the worst actress in history. (They couldn't have cast anyone else? Absolutely anyone? Cyndi Lauper was too busy?) It all ends with a loudly gauche climax that involves, among other things, blood gushing out of a toilet. By that point, the movie has long forsaken any chance it had to forge a coldly striking '80s style. Most of The Lost Boys looks incredibly pedestrian.So there we were, watching an '80s teen-vampire flick with very little gore, no nudity (hardly any sex, other than a preposterous MTV-style fling between Patric and Gertz with no heat whatsoever), no drugs (unless you count blood addiction), and, God knows, no scares. Why were we watching? Corey Haim had just died. A semi-valid excuse that will expire soon, until the other Corey buys it.
link directly to this review at http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=1170&reviewer=416
originally posted: 03/12/10 14:58:06
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USA
02-Jul-1987 (R)
DVD: 10-Aug-2004
UK
N/A
Australia
02-Feb-1988 (M)
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