I cannot tell you how excited I got when I realized what this movie was when idly browsing what’s available on Hulu. I felt the waves of emotion crashing through me, breaking through the crust of depression. I felt a spark in my heart, the twinkle return to my eye. I don’t know why, but I was giddy with anticipation to watch the obviously horrible, terrible, crap film In the Lost Lands, starring Dave Bautista and Milla Jovovich, directed by Paul W.S. Anderson. Having finished the film, I find myself at peace.
Two Andersons and Dave
So first, let’s waft off the mental fog if you’re wondering how you think you know Paul W.S. Anderson, because truthfully, no socially-adjusted sane person knows who PWSA is. I do. I have an acronym for him. It’s PWSA. PWSA is not PTA. PSWA is not Paul Thomas “Parent-Teach-Alliance” Anderson. No. PTPTAA is the guy who made those shitty movies There Will Be Blood and Licorice Pizza and most recently, One Battle After Another. Our darling WPSEPA is the guy who gave us the Resident Evil movies.
PW.S.A is also married to Milla Jovovich, who (and I hope you’re piecing this together as I go) is the protagonist of the Resident Evil movies, many of which were written by little-known and little-celebrated writer Paul W.S. Anderson. So. We got Mr. P.W. Anderson writing a movie, then directing his wife in it. Also Bautista is in this for some fucking reason.
Bautista is a funny guy. I don’t just mean he’s got comedic timing, I mean that he’s got such a weird filmography. He’s very hot and cold with his projects, which makes picking a movie with him a true coin-flip. My first run-in with his acting came in the form of the celebrated murder-thriller Guardians of the Galaxy, followed by a small(ish) film titled Bushwick. I liked him in Bushwick. I wrote a review for it ages ago when I saw it, but I never wanted to publish it. It’s a 3-paragraph clunker of a review that doesn’t mention the impact that Bautista left on me with his performance. General audiences got a taste of his genuine acting prowess in Blade Runner 2049, so I never bothered publishing my review. At the same time, I’ve spotted Bautista in other roles, such as the Bond flick Spectre, and my personal favorite of his early works, Riddick. He keeps picking roles in this theme with films like Army of the Dead, which followed his success as Drax, and just preceded his roles in Dune and Knock at the Cabin.
I dunno. Bautista has the chops. He just doesn’t have the agent. If he wants to play a goofy meathead, he has better options than something like In the Lost Lands, but for some reason, he keeps picking crap films between his really great ones.
Bliss and Ignorance
To return to our feature film In the Lost Lands, I cannot adequately explain the excitement I got when watching the trailer. I hope if you watch the trailer, you’ll understand why it spoke to me so deeply.
There was something about the way it gave me goosebumps, something about how earnest the footage looked, something about how goofy it truly was. And boy, does this movie deliver exactly what I was looking for in spades. Heck- I skipped over deciding between watching Oddity and If I Had Legs I Would Kick You to immediately smash play on this film.
I wrote notes while watching In the Lost Lands, directed by PeeWee S. Anderson. Here’s a few gems:
- It’s giving Jupiter Ascending
- Oh the cinematography. It’s giving Rebel Moon
- Oh the snakes!! The twin snakes! From Nicolas Cage’s Outcast
- The queen is a furry she gets one wish and she wants the power to become a wolf
- Exploding train
- My my, Dave Bautista has tiny nipples
Yes, I write movie notes like I’m a chronic TikTok consumer.
If there’s a common thread between the movies I was reminded of between Rebel Moon and Outcast (which I fucking know none of you watched) and Jupiter Ascending, it’s that the films all strive for an epic height. With the exception of Outcast, everyone from the cast to the crew put in a ton of effort and earnestly tried to make this film as best as they could. And, to its credit, I do think that In the Lost Lands is as good as it could get.
I mean, fuckin’ hell, the movie features goth witches with face tattoos, undead demons, semi-Christian opression machine states, apocalypse cowboys, and trains with tanks. What else did you expect? (If you need an answer to that rhetorical, I urge you to read the ending of my review for the Twilight movies). After all, this amazing piece of art was inspired by the fantasy incest guy, George RR Martin!
That said, In the Lost Lands also reminded me of a few other works.
Aesthetically, I got a lot of 300, from cinematographer Larry Fong, and Book of Eli, from cinematographer Don Burgess, and, as much as I tried to avoid in this review, the film Priest, which… uh… also was a work of Don Burgess. Now let’s look to see who was the director of photography for In the Lost Lands. Drumroll please!
Wait, who the fuck is Glen MacPherson?
I did these searches live as I wrote, so unfortunately you guys get to feel the anticlimactic discovery in real time with me. There’s a wiki rabbit hole that ends with a quick glance at MacPherson’s filmography, but it’s clear to me that In the Lost Lands is his best work. But even aside from the cinematography and look of the film- and man, I gotta say, I really liked the look of this film- there are many striking similarities between In the Lost Lands and Priest.
Now, I never got around to writing a review for Priest, which feels odd to me considering just how goofy and earnest that movie was. For the sake of being a know-it-all who likes calling out filmmakers for their plagiarism, let’s take a quick diversion to talk about Priest.
Priest Movie Review
The film Priest follows a fallen priest of the quasi-Christian fascist state as he leaves one of the last remaining human cities to venture into a demon-infested wasteland to help a damsel in distress. Along the way, he is accosted by cross-bearing religious extremists, rides a horse, there’s a train, and there are vampire fights. There’s a major character who wears a black cowboy hat and a black overcoat.
In the Lost Lands Movie Review
The film In the Lost Lands follows a fallen priest of witch in the a quasi-Christian fascist state as he she leaves one of the last remaining human cities to venture into a demon-infested wasteland to help a damsel in distress. Along the way, he she is accosted by cross-bearing religious extremists, rides a horse, there’s a train, and there are vampire werewolf fights. There’s a major character who wears a black cowboy hat and a black overcoat.
The Crucifix Crux
There’s not much else I can talk about here to convince you to watch In the Lost Lands. Some Redditors aptly pointed out that this movie is one of those films that requires you to just shut up and go for the ride. It’s not a complicated film, so don’t expect anything crazy or zany or quality. This is a Paul A.W.S. Anderson movie, so it’s really just a vehicle for him to make his wife look badass. Enjoy what you can.
Is this movie bad? Not if you want to numb your brain and just enjoy some noises. Is this movie good? Absolutely not, and only truly exceeds in one metric: effort. I mean. You can’t watch this movie and not feel like the cinematographer wasn’t trying his damndest. You can’t convince anyone that this movie’s look wasn’t brave and bold- even if you’d seen it in other films before. I mean, these people really, really tried their best. Their only mistake was trusting 1 dude who is horny for his wife to write, direct, and then cast said wife as the lead. You just will not get anything extraordinary out of a movie with that set of circumstances. And, speaking of being horny for Milla Jovovich:
By the way, this legend is still active, and engaging in very important topics to this day!
All in all you guys, I had a very hard time rating this movie. It’s stupid and fun, and it’s everything it promised to be. At the same time, it’s utter garbage nonsense bullcrap taint litter. It’s
GOOD
I watched In the Lost Lands on Hulu.
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