The Lost Boys: Movie Review

The Lost Boys is a 1987 movie directed by Joel Schumacher (the same guy who directed Falling Down, to name one) starring Jason Patric and Corey Haim (who died in 2010 after a wrecked life). Let me tell you straight: I liked this movie a lot. I found it well done, fun, with great special effects, a nice cinematography, a well-chosen cast, and a more than appropriate soundtrack. But in order to like this film you must fully embrace the 80s fashion and music, and also accept to enter a world where vampires exist and a lot of people know about them. If you are willing to do this, I’m sure you will enjoy The Lost Boys!

Here’s the plot. Lucy (Dianne Wiest: she’s the Avon representative in Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands) moves to Santa Clara to live with her father (Barnard Hughes) with her two sons Michael (Jason Patric) and Sam (Corey Haim). Santa Clara seems like a dodgy place, especially because of various groups of adolescents going around on motorbikes, taking drugs, and doing who knows what else. But above all, we soon discover that there are supernatural forces in action that are connected with the group led by David (Kiefer Sutherland): flying beings with superhuman strength kill one person after another. Things get complicated when Michael messes with them when he falls in love with the beautiful Star (Jami Gertz). His brother and the two amazing vampire-slayers Edgar and Alan Frog (Corey Feldman and Jamison Newlander) will rescue him!

This film is a real roller coaster with a horror flavour. There are quite a few violent and bloody scenes, but there’s also a certain sense of humor pervading the film from beginning to end and the two things blend together in an absolutely harmonious way. There are some movies that can be violent and entertaining at the same time, and this is one of those for me (as opposed to Kingsman: The Secret Service, for example). So, there are blood-thirsty vampires who slaughter people and drink their blood, and at the same time there’s the slightly absent-minded grandfather who in the end is actually very smart; there are self-destructive rebel teenagers and there are also teenagers who hunt vampires as if they were into a children’s comic book. And everything works great!

Schumacher succeeds in giving the film a unique style: he shoots a vampire film in modern times without renouncing the Gothic touch (the vampires’ nest is inside a luxury hotel of the late nineteenth century sunk into a fault after an earthquake), and at the same time modernizing the vampire look without making it too silly. Of course the lost vampire boys drink, take drugs, listen to rock music, and ride motorbikes, what would you do if you happened to be immortal? :–)

The soundtrack deserves some words: it sounds dated, but it’s always nice (and fun) to hear Roger Daltrey of The Who, Aerosmith, and The Doors, as well as 80s’ stuff aged more than badly like I Still Believe by Tim Cappello. And by the way: you cannot get more 80s than this:

In short, The Lost Boys is a fun movie with teenager protagonists like other films of the period like Young Sherlock Holmes (1985), The Goonies (1985), Stand By Me (1986), Gremlins (1984), and Explorers (1985), but this time with a great supernatural/action/horror twist. Perhaps Schumacher could have dared more by trying to scare the viewer a little more, but he was probably more interested in the action side of vampire hunting. And, as I mentioned, it works great! Ciao!

---

External links:

• The movie trailer on Youtube
• The movie page on Internet Movie DataBase
• Movie review on Keith and the movies
• Movie review on The Joe-down
• Movie review on The abominable Dr. Welsh
• Movie review on What the craggus saw
• Movie review on Merc with a movie blog

Pubblicità