By: Jacob Cameron

In the Lost Lands is the latest film from Paul W.S. Anderson. Anderson has the reputation of directing the Resident Evil series of films starring Milla Jovovich. While Anderson has directed other films, such as 1995’s Mortal Kombat and 1997’s Event Horizon, those films appear to be his legacy. As that series is the primary reason anyone knows who he is as a filmmaker. In the Lost Lands has no connection to Resident Evil. But considering the quality of the film, you would not be blamed if you assumed that it was part of said series.

The film centers around a witch named Grey Alys and her guide named Boyce. Grey Alys, played by Milla Jovovich, is commissioned by a queen to hunt down a shapeshifter and take its powers. Boyce, played by Dave Bautista, is commissioned by Grey Alys to lead her across the lost lands to find the shapeshifter. All while the duo face turmoil from the Queen, her enforcer, and an evil cult-like church.

As someone who will defend the quality of Event Horizon with great ferocity, it pains me to say that this film was not good. This film has a lot of problems which outweigh any potential the film may have had from its premise. There is a lot of the DNA of an Anderson Resident Evil film present here. However, many of the plot elements and characters feel like they belong in a knockoff of Mad Max: Fury Road.

I’ve been a fan of Dave Bautista since his days as a pro wrestler. He has gotten incredibly lucky in getting to work with great directors such as Denis Villeneuve and Sam Mendes. I say this because even though this is a bad film, he is giving an effort. I also liked the idea of the Lost Lands as a world. There are some interesting design choices that would make the world feel lived in. 

Unfortunately, the film is very dull in the color department. The color pallet is brown, grey, and black. Which does not make for pleasant viewing. It also doesn’t help that every source of light in this film has this weird blurring effect that is annoying. A best description of this effect is the Slo-Mo effect from 2013’s Dredd. But there was a reason for that effect to exist in that context.

Not only is the movie ugly to look at, but the story is a hot mess. The witch story is just a small part of the whole package. There’s a cult-like church that, not only wants the witch dead, but also the queen. The church leader, know as The Patriarch, makes a ham-fisted power play. That is just an example of the film trying to be something like a mix Game Of Thrones and Mad Max: Fury Road. But it fails at both in grand fashion.

At the end of the day, this film was a chore to get through. This is a bad film; but it’s the boring, kind of bad, and not the entertaining kind of bad.

1 Star