Baddie – Evolution?

Lesson – Students copy, artists steal. Directors make shameless ripoffs.

Warning: This is a visual spoiler-heavy post. I usually try not to give away too much about the films I watch, but to talk about this one I’ve got to use pictures and stuff. Otherwise my review would be as follows: A dull movie sloppily cut together.

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The Lost Tribe on Amazon

If you, like me, sat around and wondered what the year 2010 was missing, then we both came to the same conclusion. Not enough “Predator” movies, that’s what. Adrien Brody in his muscled awesome-ness, Danny Trejo being…Danny Trejo. “All American Badass Topher Grace” (-James). 2010 was a great year.

Too great for it’s own good, because The Lost Tribe also came out.

Now, I learned retrospectively that this is a re-make of a movie called The Forgotten Ones that came out in 2009. It has Jewel Staite in it, so I’ll be watching it. Now, this means that The Lost Tribe is a Predators franchise ripoff that came out directly before and after the Predators reboot. I don’t even know what to do with that information.

Here’s the good part – the prosthetics are actually decent. The script calls for several creatures, and they have differentiation between them, including the leader. There’s good facial movement (a feat with full face makeups) and the actors seem very agile in the suits. They actually leap from trees and stuff, no CGI, which was damn impressive in full suits.

Here are the bad parts, and I’ll just break them down little by little.

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The film itself is sloppy. There are a lot of cuts where I ended up doing a double take, wondering what the hell just happened. Timelines skip, and it’s really not ever clear what is going on. The basic plot line is, as far as I can gather – Research corporation finances a trip to find the lost evolutionary ‘link’. The Catholic Church gets pissy, because it will undo thousands of years of religion, and hires the military to kill the team. A boat crash lands into the same island, and five people act idiotically until they are systematically killed by the same lost link, who isn’t so dead. This is all explained in a video left by the chief researcher. Halfway through the movie. Still with me? Great. Now, in theory, this is kinda neat. Evolutionary lost link, still thriving? Cool. They find a sick looking skull, so these critters are gonna look great, right? Wrong. Really, this is where the “Predator” thing is most prevalent, as the creatures feature long dreads and they hide their faces with other skulls. Also, they have that weird heat-vision thing, but in “Lost Tribe” it’s smell-based (it looks the same). This leads to an extended sequence where the not-dead-yet character covers herself in mud-I’m sorry, I mean plant extract, to avoid being seen-I’m sorry, smelled.

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Left – Original, Right- New

Pictured above is the creature from The Forgotten Ones (left) and The Lost Tribe (right). There is improvement in creature design, but it’s unfortunately towards the Predator side of things. However, my real issue is that these creatures don’t…really look like the missing humanoid link. It improves from TFO to TLT, but barely. These creatures also lack the ability to rip hearts out of chests (completely crackings sternums) but they do it anyways.

Let me wrap things up. The moral of the story is that this movie is superfluous. It’s slow to start, wonky throughout and the conclusion is unsatisfactory. The horror is negligible  and the blood/gore minor. There is, of course, an unnecessary relationship that starts with a misunderstanding and ends with reconciliation, but also death. Shocking. Save yourself two hours and watch the 2010 Predators. It’s a zillion times more enjoyable.

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Pictured: True wuv. She’s smothering him. Literally.

By the way – this is what the soundtrack sounds like.

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