Review: In the Lost Lands

Director:  Paul W.S. Anderson

Stars:  Milla Jovovich, Dave Bautista, Amara Okereke

I have a theory that 2005 was the annus horriblis for mainstream movies, pocked with a few scant gems but more notable for the sheer number of deformed turkeys ushered forth. Studios were emboldened by the use of CGI in epic blockbusters like Lord of the Rings and eager to try to recreate their magic, but on lesser budgets for thinner material, with often dismal results. Video game movies (Doom, BloodRayne) and endless remakes (The Fog, Amityville, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) were in a stuttering ascendency while Hollywood was scrabbling for any and every potential IP to reverse its fortunes. Shooting on digital was helping to cut spiralling costs, but the world of movies was taking on a harsh, unforgiving texture in the process.

Based on a George R.R. Martin short story from the early ’80s and wrangled to select screens by video game movie veteran Paul W.S. Anderson, In the Lost Lands is the most 2005-coded experience I’ve had in a very, very long time. First of all, it looks utterly grotesque. Supposedly built using the Unreal Engine that powers games like Fortnite, its blue-screened-in post-apocalyptic fantasy world doesn’t stand scrutiny when ballooned to the size of even a modest cinematic canvas, while the foreground detritus that surrounds the actors looks as thought it was collected from a Saw movie yard sale. You could call it a cultivated aesthetic, but it smacks of technical limitations, casting the entire dystopia in a rusty grey/brown fug from which it cannot emerge.

Secondly, and from a storytelling standpoint, it is borderline indecipherable. Nearly nothing and nobody is adequately set up as Anderson grows restless to get onto the supposed ‘good stuff’. We’re years after the fall of mankind. The remnants of the species now all live in one city. Sure. There are witches and shapeshifters now. Okay. And also an iron-fisted Christian religious order populated by Mad Max WarBoys who have been forced to attend Sunday school. Fine.

Milla Jovovich (of course) is a witch named Grey Alys (always Alice!) who has somehow whipped the proletariat (a mob of – seemingly – oily homeless people) into a revolutionary mindset. She’s also compelled to grant wishes whenever asked, so she’s more of a genie. When a woman named Melange (Amara Okereke) – who turns out to be queen! – asks her for the power to become a wolf, Alys is obligated to grant it, but to do so she needs a guide through the Lost Lands (where she’s also from?) to complete the task. She settles on our narrating cowboy Boyce (Dave Bautista), a hunter with a propensity for throwing two-headed snakes at people. They set off for their destination with Arly Jover’s stern head inquisitor on their tails… aboard a steam train that happens to go everywhere her bounty is headed.

If this set-up just about works as a flimsy washing line to hang uninspired set pieces on, what it fails to establish with any success is anyone’s motivation. Why, for God’s sake, is anyone doing anything? Character work is non-existent. Bautista has proven himself a fine actor with range, but he’s given nothing to work with here, so plays one-note macho. Jovovich gives even less, reading lines as though thoroughly bored or confused herself. As they share life-threatening adventures together, Anderson seems keen to suggest that they’ve bonded, but there’s nothing close to chemistry there. Jovovich and Bautista simply speak at one another like eighth graders reluctantly performing in a school play.

Granted, there’s an eleventh-hour diatribe in voice-over to explain why everything’s happened – which is no doubt supposed to scan as a scintillating twist reveal – but it plays more like an excuse than an explanation. And, crucially, without any of these details set in stone early doors, the act of watching In the Lost Lands is by turns baffling, irritating and painfully dull.

It’s ironic that Anderson has made it this far mostly making video game adaptations. He now turns his hand to adapting fantasy prose, and he’s made his most video game-like movie of all. Characters travel from level to level. They fight or avoid things. Everything resets, off we go again. Even the movie’s best set piece makes no sense. Stranded on a school bus cable car over a ravine, Alys and Boyce fight for their lives against god’s soldiers as they pile in through windows… but where are they even coming from?? The pair have had to abandon their horses to make the crossing, but once they make it across… they’re on horseback again. It constantly feels as though fundamental elements are either missing, or haven’t been considered. Anderson has evolved over the years a somewhat decent ability to stage action, but most of what happens here appears cut to ribbons. And with no incentive to understand any of it, what’s the point in trying to follow it?

When Neil Marshall got an eleventh hour phone call during the production of season 2 of Game of Thrones to direct the action set piece episode “Blackwater”, he showed how dyed-in-the-wool genre filmmakers could bring Martin’s big ideas to bear on limited means. In the Lost Lands proves that this shouldn’t be taken as a rule of thumb. While I’m often something of a Paul W.S. Anderson apologist – enjoying a number of his Resident Evil sequels, his campy Pompeii and even Monster Hunter – what’s presented here amounts to a colossal failure on nearly every metric you could think of. An incomprehensible eyesore that’s only a chore to sit through. Easily Anderson’s worst picture and – hopefully – as bad as cinema releases get in 2005.

Sorry, 2025.