Wednesday, January 18, 2012

The Lost Boys: A review from the perspective of someone who saw this movie for the first time as an adult

Yeah, this is another copied movie review from my other blog because I'm super lazy, get over it. I don't have a real excuse for being so lazy, but I DO have a staph infection in my leg from a spa! Seriously. More to come on that...

As the title suggests, I recently saw "The Lost Boys" for the first time. I noted to The Boyfriend that I was in the mood to watch a scary movie since it's finally October. We had just gotten a new Logitech Revue that allows you to stream movies straight to your TV (we'd been linking the Mac up until now, due to our lack of video game consoles, and it was a mess) and I was antsy to try it out! After striking out with Netflix, we turned to Crackle.com with whom the Revue has an agreement and were able to choose from a few totally free options. "The Lost Boys" won as The Boyfriend expressed his disgust that I had not yet seen it. I was assured that this movie was plenty scary and I would love it as much as everyone else does.

Now, I'm a lover of classic 80's movies as much as the next guy and really had high hopes for this one; I was surprisingly disappointed. 

I have a feeling most people already know how the movie goes, so I'll keep the synopsis short. A family (mom and two sons) move to California to live with the kooky old grandpa who is fond of taxidermied animals and the ladies. On their way into town, the boys see "Murder Capital of America" grafittied on the back of a billboard. Scary, right!? They pretty much immediately head to the boardwalk to meet some ladies and check out the scene. Mike, the big brother, sees some broad with a perm and decides to stalk her. He ends up getting mixed up with the wrong crowd, eats some maggots, drinks some blood, and becomes a vampire. The movie progresses at a decent pace from here, but with little character development and lots of vampire type activities. At the end of the movie, you find out who the Head Vamp is and yada, yada, yada, everyone is happy.
This probably would've scared the shit out of me when I was 8.


To me, it was amazing that people had been tolerating vampires for years in this community and no one, until Corey Haim, thought to seek out the Head Vamp and kill him/her. Or maybe they had thought of it, but nobody actually did it. Seeing this movie for the first time as an adult is a terrible idea. I'm sure everyone has wonderful memories of this movie, but it just didn't do it for adult me.

Maybe it's the recent vampire obsession, maybe it's the fact that I read the "info" on the movie before we watched it, or maybe it's because the movie isn't that well written, but I pretty much figured out the plot within the first 10 minutes of the movie. According to The Boyfriend, I wasn't supposed to know that they were vampires and I wasn't supposed to realize so soon that the brother "Mike" was turning into one. Unfortunately, living in 2011 pretty much ruined the surprise.

After all the hype surrounding this movie, I was really expecting something great that would stand the test of time. I'm sure that as a child, which most people I know were when this movie came out, it was very
scary. I'm also sure that if I had been 11, I would've thought Corey Haim was the cats pajamas. Sadly, I know how "The Corey Haim Story" ends and saw him on "Celebrity Rehab", so any illusions were dismissed at the door.

Probably would've thought Corey Haim was hot when I was 8, too.

If you watched this movie as a kid, and haven't seen it since, don't watch it again! It will ruin your wonderful memories. If you're presently an adult and haven't ever seen it, only watch it if you have young children you want to scare. You're bound to re-evaluate everyone's opinion about everything who has told you it's awesome. Sorry, but it's not. The only awesome thing was the dog.

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