Review of The Lost (2006) by Adam A — 27 Apr 2013

The Lost (Chris Sivertson, 2006).

Chris Sivertson, longtime friend and colleague of Lucky McKee, was bitten by the Jack Ketchum bug right around the same time McKee was, and the first Sivertson/Ketchum adaptation, The Lost, appeared in 2006. All well and good, with a few caveats: (a) Sivertson (who would soon after be responsible for the Lindsay Lohan vehicle I Know Who Killed Me) is not nearly the director McKee is and (b) The Lost is not one of Ketchum's better novels. Put these two things together and your chances of coming up with brilliance are pretty slim.

Plot: Four years ago, Ray Pye (Red White and Blue's Marc Senter), while wandering the woods with his friends Jennifer (Rocker's Shay Astar) and Tim (Drillbit Taylor's Alex Frost), came upon two young ladies out hiking (Misty's First Female Lover's Misty Mundae and Ruby Larocca) on a romantic getaway weekend. When all was said and done, one of the hikers was dead, the other barely alive, and Ray Pye and his friends had a very dark secret to keep. Fast-forward to the present day. Charlie Schilling (Kill Bill's Michael Bowen) and his now-retired partner Ed Anderson (The Artist's Ed Lauter) know Ray Pye shot those women, but have never been able to prove it. They keep trying to find ways to shake that tree, but it might get shook all by itself when Ray meets the new bad girl in town, Kath (The Gingerdead Man's Robin Sydney), who makes him think very dark thoughts indeed...

Before I go slagging this movie off, it's obvious that a lot of people threw a lot of talent at it, and in hindsight a number of folks who didn't do all that well here have really stepped up their game in the intervening years, especially Senter, one of the few bright spots in the recent The Devil's Carnival. None of which changes that fact that even Ed Lauter, normally the most reliable of character actors, couldn't turn in a solid performance to save his life in this movie, and I don't know why. Sivertson's not a great director by any means, but he's not that bad. And still everyone involved in this movie (and I only touched on a few of the names you will actually know) seems to have phoned it in.

Couldn't get my head round this one. **.