Review of The Lost Boys (1987) by Campbell P — 11 Jun 2015

There's nothing like a little vampire campiness! The Lost Boys is a extremely fun movie that stars Corey Haim, Jason Patric, and Kiefer Sutherland. This cult horror flick follows Sam and Michael who have just moved from Phoenix Arizona to Santa Carla due to a split of their parents.

One day on the boardwalk, Michael catches interest in a girl named Star who hangs out with this boardwalk gang that messes with the shops and attractions. They lead Michael to their hangout and convince him to drink a bottle of blood which turns him into a vampire.

This film is really what I wanted it to be, it was campy, suspenseful, funny, and entertaining all around. The stars of the film and really everyone did a fine job although Sam and the two comic store kids were really over acting sometimes, which I guess was pretty funny nevertheless.

The storyline focuses on all the important details but fails to explain some things. For one thing the grandpa has no purpose being in this movie except for using the house. His presence in here made no sense, he acted really weird and we never got an explanation why.

What was with that taxidermy? You can go and say he's old and that he acts this way because he's old but that's really cliche then too. The beginning of the movie starts off kinda off paced and a bit awkward when we start off with the policeman being killed by them and the characters getting adjusted to their new home and while this is exposition it took a bit too long.

Also when they are dangling from the train tracks and drop, what the heck happened? They're clearly alive but what happened down there? That never got explained and kinda bothers me why that part of the movie was even there.

The highlights of this film are that the movie is really fun, there's some scary fun given the cool vampire look and the whole city setting is pretty cool. The characters act cartoonish at times but that's what makes them fun and they were a lot of fun to watch.

The last 30 minutes of this film were incredible, I was on the edge with anxiousness. The fights with the vampires were over the top gory fun. The final vampire death though is WAY too insane to go along with the amount of suspense that was created.

I wasn't looking to chuckle, I wanted a really cool fight!! But nitpicking aside, The Lost Boys is a creative fun movie that despite its tiny story telling flaws is fun if you love campy horror or horror in general.

B+.