As a child, The Lost Boys was one of my favorite films.  Joel Schumaucher’s stylish and funny teenage vampire flick was blessed with a good cast, some great one-liners, homoerotic tension between Keifer Sutherland and hunky brooder Jason Patric, and a sense of fun and occasional menace.  I remember begging my Mom to rent the R rated (though rather tame by today’s standards) videotape for me when I was around 11 years old.  The Lost Boys seemed ripe for a sequel.  Flash-forward more than 20 years later and we finally get that sequel, shipped direct to DVD.  The Lost Boys: The Tribe is a soul-deadening, numbing, poorly acted and paced disaster.  After about the 45 minute mark, it became downright depressing for me to finish watching.  Nothing more than a massive blow to a childhood favorite, this sickening turd doesn’t deserve the same moniker as the original film.  It’s poorly acted and the dialogue is little more than nonstop profanity and a torrent of ill-advised homophobic insults (cool, right ?).  The acting wouldn’t cut it on Gossip Girl and the actors aren’t even very good looking (shallow, but true….where’s the hot babe).  Maybe the most unforgivable thing is that the tribe of “lost boys” isn’t even cool, they just look like old surf bums with poorly placed facial hair and barely closeted homoerotic tendencies like filming the torture of a male Emo teenager who probably loves HIM CDs.  I wanted to be a member of the lost boys when I was 11, I’ll pass on this tribe of nerds.

The plot (which is exactly like left over meatloaf) mirrors the first film.  Two teenagers move to a surfing town called Luna Bay (huh) where the tribe hangs out.  The brother was a former surfing pro and his sister falls hard for the brooding leader of the tribe of vampires.  Shoddy makeup and much shitty mayhem ensue.  This thing has buckets of gore that fail to get the pulse racing, but when two girls kissing at a party (both looked past 30) did nothing for me, I knew it was time to call it a night.  Corey Feldman shows up (collecting a paycheck) and plays a character named Edgar Frog, who is only cool when you’re not playing him at 40 years of age.  His buddy Corey Haim has a minor and pointless cameo (he was probably too wasted to have a bigger role). 

Poorly filmed, cheap-looking, inept and ultimately painful to sit through, The Tribe is one of the worst films ever made.  It’s easily the worst film I’ve seen since Highlander: The Source, and nearly as depressing as that disaster.  For fans of the old film, there’s a stellar 2 disc set out there.  When this thing hits DVD in a few weeks, leave it collecting dust on the shelf, and save your childhood memories.  They even play an awful cover of the classic song “Cry Little Sister” by some metal twerps who belong as far away from a recording studio as Toby Keith does. That was the straw that broke this reviewer’s back. 

Film Grade: F

• Tweet