In the Lost Lands is probably terrible, probably unworthy of my interest, and yet I am mildly obsessed with this thing. There is a kind of perverse nostalgia compelling me towards it. I saw the trailer for In the Lost Lands and said out loud to nobody "that looks like total shit, I need to see this".
The movie has the over-produced color correction of a 2000s movie, think of Zack Snyder's 300 or Robert Rodriguez's Sin City - plus the overblown lens flair on every lighting source from JJ Abrams' Star Trek. The plot is a generic post-apocalypse western SciFi fantasy... thing which would have sounded very cool back in the 90s if it were an anime OVA, not one of a dozen similar genre mashup ideas. This movie is apparently based on a George RR Martin story, one purchased by the producers back when Game of Thrones was red hot. Instead the idea sat on a development shelf for a near-decade, gathering dust and losing relevancy. If In the Lost Lands were a trailer during a Sony State of Play, it would fit right in next to say, Forspoken. During coming attractions next to proper movies with more than two colors in their pallet like Novocain or Black Bag, In the Lost Lands looks like a bizarre mistake. Maybe somebody had thrown together a fake trailer and AMC Theaters had put it up as a joke.
What In the Lost Lands reminds me of more than anything is bad movie called Priest. Do you remember that? You don't do you? It came out in 2011? Starred Paul Bettany? Was basically lame Judge Dread but with vampires and priests that knew kung-fu but also vaguely a western? In the Lost Lands is that kind of movie. Thing is, Priest made 76 million dollars fifteen years ago. It was based on a Korean comic book that nobody in the West knew about, so had no existing fanbase, yet drew crowds. Priest did not review well, had no fanbase then or now. Paul Bettany would rather you never mention it in presence, I imagine. However, Priest was profitable!
In the Lost Lands is a disaster that has made none of its budget back. It is too small a movie to even get clowned on by industry types who love to laugh when say, Mickey17 is not a hit. There's something to note here: a D+ genre movie fifteen years ago could make money. Whereas these days, oh no. If you have 55 million dollars, you would save more of it by setting it on fire than doing this: flying Dave Bautista and Milla Jovovich out to Poland to pose dramatically in front of green screens with guns and sickle knives.
This massive flop will probably be the final nail in coffin for the long decline of the career of Paul W.S. Anderson, who not coincidentally is married to Milla Jovovich. In the Lost Lands could very well be the last time either name gets inside a cineplex. Anderson and Jovovich have been a great power couple in the realm of mediocre genre flicks, having piloted the original Resident Evil film series through six or seven installments (neither you or I care to actually count). Their last production together was a 2020 adaptation of the game series Monster Hunter - and we share the same stunned reaction of "wait a second, there was a Monster Hunter movie?!" And yeah, that happened, it existed. Anderson has never been a great director, but who can deny the appeal of things like Event Horizon or Mortal Kombat or even Resident Evil 1? Alien vs Predator sucks but he understood the pop-corn-ball assignment in a way. He's never made a truly great movie, and has made many movies few will remember (Pompeii, The Three Musketeers, In the Lost Lands). As hacky and frankly, unambitious as Anderson is, I cannot find the rhythm to dance at his grave.
I feels the environment is not going in a healthy direction if we cannot have a space for garbage like In the Lost Lands and garbagemen like Paul W.S. Anderson. If they are extinct, the entire food chain is in trouble.
That said, In the Lost Lands could easily have released on Netflix and been entirely nothing. Little about it aesthetically makes it - to invent a word - 'non-Netflix-y'. Paul W.S. Anderson will probably continue his career in total anonymity making some movie starring The Rock, Gal Gadot, and his wife Milla for Netflix next year about car thief assassin spies that nobody will know even released. There's movies just like that that come out to streaming seemingly every week. I'm not writing about The Gorge because what is there to say about The Gorge? Do you even know what The Gorge is? How about The Electric State? I might have made that movie up for all you know. Does it matter?
Thing is, In the Lost Lands does exist. I saw it in a theater on a Wednesday night. There were actually other humans in there with me, they can confirm this happened. It had a physical reality unlike The Gorge, or that Netflix movie I might have made up last paragraph. I felt compelled to see In the Lost Lands during the one week it would have mass and occupy a real space. This movie was like one of those rare flowers that only bloom once every decade, you either see it now or you'll die having missed out.
So, what did I see that was so ephemeral and unique? Well, Milla Jovovich is a witch and Dave Bautista is a cowboy with a double-headed snake pet. They go on a road trip across very gray wastelands over-crowded with ruins. Really busy landscapes in this production design. Then there's a final boss fight against a terrible-looking CG werewolf. There's an evil Church, they have an armored train. Arly Jover chases our heroes while wearing aviator sunglasses. There's White Walkers in a nuclear silo. Dave Baustista bangs the evil queen (Amara Okereke). She laughs at her husband's sick bed.
There are interesting concepts with In the Lost Lands that feel wasted on such a stock world with such limited artistic vision. There's a Mad Max city run by a dying tyrant full of zealots but it is missing most everything juicy in the details that made Fury Road and Furiosa delicious. Instead it is just gray. There's no mythology behind this church: it's just The Church, the ur-evil vaguely Catholic zealot group that exists in every JRPG or that movie Priest. Even that name "Lost Lands" is like the Kirkland Brand version of proper world building. The genre choices are so vague and non-specific this could have been a segment in that pile of nerd fetishes that was Sucker Punch. (Not that anybody remembers Sucker Punch either, and that's a good thing. That movie is better off forgotten.)
On the other hand, the sheer lack of color and taste is weirdly attractive. In the Lost Lands is lame, rehashed and refried, but also is utterly shameless on these points. Who doesn't like Bautista? Who doesn't like it when he's a loner hero with at least three women in love with him and also mourns a snake? This movie is a world full of trash and ruins and In the Lost Lands itself is trash and part of the ruins of the film industry. And to the movie's credit, it does operate on a kind of fairy tale logic where Milla Jovovich must grant any person their wish - which makes her job all the more difficult when multiple people wish for contradictory things. Luckily evil genie logic means there's wiggle room here.
It does suck that this is all leading to a terrible fight with an ugly as sin digital monster. However, the plot came up with a halfway decent twist beforehand. The werewolf looks terrible and the fight seems like a Final Fantasy X limit break cutscene, which undercuts what should be a solid emotional ending for these characters. I almost wish it looked worse. If the CG were hilariously bad versus merely ugly, it would work more. That's really the issue here: In the Lost Lands should have tried to be worse. It is lame and aged, but it could and should have been lamer.
The most creative element is that Milla Jovovich's face is decorated with a string of runes which look cool. I like that the whole world needs to remind you that its dead every few seconds by having skulls on everything, from the royal palace to random walls in the ruins. Yet I cannot deny that there are a million movies better than this, that do not look this weird and cheap, that are hornier have better action and more interesting worlds, so why would anybody watch this? Apparently nobody wanted to see the good version of this movie, Furiosa, either. Why did I even write this?
Maybe it is this: I have always been charmed by cheesy B-movies from another era. I love things like Flash Gordon or Battle Beyond the Stars, these wonderfully shame-free and cheesy movies full of big acting and weird aliens all over the place. There's plenty of movies from the Eighties made by guys like Albert Pyun which were shot in real locations and smashed real cars that you can enjoy more than this. And fifteen years ago, a movie like In the Lost Lands would have been standard, generic, and stock, just another digital mass-produced mistake. I would have hated its guts for just looking like everything else. Now it is out of time. In the Lost Lands is 2009 as Hell, but came out in 2025. The trends it is chasing ended when the Black Eyed Peas were still culturally relevant. It is nearly as ancient now as those Pyun movies were back in the Obama days. Don't throw out this trash out, it belongs in a museum.
Priest is a movie that nobody loved and nobody ever will love. I think somebody is going to love In the Lost Lands. That somebody might not be me, I appreciate its existence while admitting it is sometimes slow and often embarrassing. But that somebody will be a kid or some huge Bautista fan. I applaud you, that lone Lost Lands fan, who gets to treasure this thing that the rest of the world missed out on. Unlike many other blockbusters, In the Lost Lands is appreciable - it is a curiosity. I cannot explain why it exists, it certainly does not make sense in a capitalist sense, but I appreciate it happened.
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