In the future, the world has crumbled in on itself. Everything is dead or dying. And the remnants of mankind take refuge in a single dank-and-dour city draped in shadows, grime and torment.
Why?
Who knows? It’s the future. And in this future, there lives a powerful witch that seemingly everyone wants dead. But this witch, Gray Alys, lives on.
Part of her longevity is because of her magical ability to make eye contact and force anything—man, zombie or feral beast—to see what she wishes them to see. Her other saving grace is the requirement that she must grant any and every wish that someone asks of her.
“I refuse no one,” she will murmur when asked. And people always ask, even though her expression immediately conveys a bitter truth: wishes always lead to one cataclysmic disaster or another.
So, when the city’s Queen approaches with a request to gain the shapeshifting ability of a werewolf, Alys dutifully replies, “I refuse no one.”
But why would the Queen want such an ability? Who knows? And when the Queen’s captain and secret lover later asks that Alys fail in that request, Alys once again declares that she cannot refuse him.
Somehow Gray Alys is required to fulfill requests that even might oppose one another. While in a magic trance, she sees a man who will guide her to that resolution. He’s a large and gnarly gunslinger named Boyce.
This massive mercenary will lead her into the Lost Lands. They will find a werewolf there. And they must also keep one step ahead of the foul crusader-like churchmen that want Gray Alys’ skin.
Oh, and Alys isn’t aware (or is she?) that Boyce also happens to be one of the Queen’s many lovers. He might even be the sire of the child that’s newly growing in her womb.
Oh, what a twisted web this witch now clings to.
But it leads to a conclusion that Gray Alys cannot refuse. Why? Only she knows for sure.
At certain points, Alys and Boyce fight together and risk their lives to protect one another (even though in other places they try to kill each other). Later in the film, Alys apologizes her role in the deaths of two characters.
There is no biblical spirituality in the story mix, but a group of power-hungry men and women—including a knight-like Crusader named The Enforcer—are presented as “the church.” Thuggish churchmen wear small crosses on their outfits. We also see them force an individual to balance on a wooden cross while trying to keep from choking as they dangle on a hangman’s noose. These church goons also torture someone with crucifixion-like torment.
The “witch,” Gray Alys demonstrates unexplained magical abilities. She makes eye-contact with several people and causes them to see visions that compel people to kill others or take actions that benefits her. The visions usually include some shapeshifting transformation or life-threatening image.
At one point, Alys levitates and goes into a vision-trance herself as she watches a werewolf attack a group of victims. Alys also declares that she is cursed and that seeing eventualities and fulfilling other’s wishes is part of that curse.
When we first see the Queen, she is dressed in a underwear-like undergarment covered by gossamer, transparent layers. And it’s later made clear that she has an active stable of lovers, including Boyce and her Captain. We see her and the captain embracing and apparently naked (though we only see them from the upper chest up, and nothing critical is seen).
Boyce and his good friend’s sister, Mara, are shown in bed after lovemaking. The two are strategically covered by a twisted cover so we see their upper bodies and bare legs (Mara’s chest is turned away from the camera’s eye). They embrace and kiss.
While never outright gruesome, the death-dealing side of this film makes up the largest share of its problematic content. We see snakes jump at the camera and attack men’s eyes (and the bloody aftermath). Arms are lopped off. A man is strung up and tortured with a glowing hot poker. A heavily bloodied woman is crucified on a spike-covered backboard and then shot. And an old blind woman has her fingers crushed and broken beneath someone’s boot.
We also see many explosive battles. Some involve men and women being shot in the head. Others involve fiery, fountain-like explosions of fuel barrels. Skeletal, undead hordes attack in a furious swarm. Those creatures are hacked at with knives, set afire and shot point blank. Several battles involve battalions of combatants who are, again, battered, hacked at and beaten down in bloody ways. People fall from great heights.
Throats are slashed, necks get snapped, people are hung by the neck. A massive werewolf attacks men and a woman with long claws and razor-sharp teeth, and blood splashes in those attacks. A large rotting creature has its eyes plucked out by a scavenger bird. Someone is shot in the shoulder and then digs the bullet out of the open wound. We see the wound being stitched up. An invalid is smothered to death.
Someone is attacked and stabbed repeatedly by two men with blades. A werewolf is slashed at with large silver claws. We then see the bloody wounds when the beast transforms back to human form. It’s off-camera, but a werewolf is stabbed repeatedly and then skinned with a small knife. (We see the resulting skinned pelt.)
We hear single uses each of an s-word and the words “d–n” and “b–ch.” “H—” is exclaimed three or four times. Someone is called a “dirty whore” several times.
Boyce drinks glasses of booze and sips from a partially filled bottle and a flask on several occasions. Once, while wounded, he proclaims that he is drunk as he pours alcohol on an open wound and digs into it in search of a bullet lodged there.
An invalid man reportedly soils himself in bed.
Director Paul W.S. Anderson appears to take a number of cues from other dystopian-minded creatives with his In the Lost Lands flick.
Like Frank Miller’s Sin City, for instance, Anderson’s latest effort is drenched in sepia tones and dark shadows. And that moody, cinematographic patina gives this bloody, doomsday fairytale—reportedly crafted from a short story by author George R. R. Martin—a glowering, gloomy feel.
Toss in werewolves, tattered cowboys, oppressive church acolytes, witchy illusions, enslaved human hordes, gunshots to the forehead, crumbling industrial landscapes and skeletal undead, and you’ve got a potpourri designed to sate any post-apocalyptic visual craving.
That doesn’t, however, mean you’ve got a great film. In the Lost Lands has a lot of style and very little substance or sense in its mix.
The end result is a dark and deadly pastiche. Everyone—be it the barely clad, lusty queen to the lusting-for-power churchmen—wants to murder everyone else here. And they do so in many a snake-fang-to-an-eyeball, rip-me-with-your-beasty-claws and skin-me-with-a-small-knife ways.
This pic is generally a mess.
But … it nails those shadows.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
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