Review: The Lost Boys: The Tribe (2008)

Director: PJ Pesce

Starring: Corey Feldman, Tad Hilgenbrink, Autumn Reeser

Website: http://www.lostboysthetribe.warnerbros.com/

“I hate fucking vampires.”

-Edgar Frog

You know, I review too many crappy sequels to good movies. I should stop doing that. I should review something totally out of my usual field. So that’s what I’m doing! I’m going to review something that is nothing like anything I usually review and…psych! Just kidding. Here’s another review of a crappy sequel.

The Lost Boys 2, made 20 years after the original one; why do I already think this will suck without even watching a minute of it? Well, let’s jump in and take a look. It starts out with a bunch of surfer bum morons jumping a fence and going out to a private beach to surf. They’re caught immediately by the owner, an older man who tells them that he owns everything in the vicinity. He bares his vampire fangs, and in turn the surfer bums bare their own…so they were all vampires. What a twist! Of course they outnumber and kill the guy, and they start kicking his head around like a soccer ball and mostly uttering loud, dumb swear words like the bunch of ghetto-born mongoloids they are.

So…yeah. These are our Lost Boys now. Will somebody just shoot me so I don’t have to do the rest of this review?!

We get our theme song by Airbourne, and I wonder why they couldn’t have just gone full stop and gotten the real AC/DC, and then we are introduced to our main characters, a brother and sister team named Chris and Nicole. They’re going to stay with their aunt, who opens the door and greets them in the most over the top way possible. Seriously, it’s like she’s having a nervous breakdown…of joy.

So she charges them $650 a month to stay in a shed in the back and sleep on futons…I guess being family doesn’t exclude them from having to sleep in a dirty old garage without any real beds, does it? They go out to explore the town where we learn that Chris was a pro surfer who got kicked off the pro circuit, and he’s looking to start up surfing again. The guy at the desk gives him the address of the Frog Bros. shop, which turns out to be an old trailer in the middle of nowhere, and Chris leaves a note so the Frog Bros. can know where to find them.

“Oh, yeah,” says Nicole sarcastically. “Leave our address at the creepy Texas Chainsaw Massacre trailer. Great plan.”

Well, as long as it’s not a cross-dressing Leatherface, I’m okay with that. I am okay with anything TCM-related as looooong as it’s not a cross-dressing Leatherface.

So Chris meets up with a guy named Shane, who apparently was also a famous surfer, and who apparently disappeared. Seeing that they have these things in common, it's only logical in this movie that neither of them think to ask any questions about any of what happened to them, and Shane invites Chris to come to his party. Even though Nicole wants to go, Chris wisely says no, and that Shane was just too weird. Then their aunt comes in and offers them to watch The Goonies with her…which is weird, since the star of that movie is in this one too, but I guess it’s an acceptable in-joke. Sort of.

So they go to the party, get into an argument with some dude, and split up. Nicole runs into Shane, who she immediately likes because…he’s hot. Meanwhile Chris gets in with a sexy young girl in a red bikini and silk sash, and gets in the shower with her and starts making out. Sounds good…so what is the other couple doing?

"Watch as I drop my voice lower, only open my eyes halfway and pretend to be the coolest guy in the movie..."

They go into a room, close the door, and talk philosophy. Well…I guess that’s a refreshing change, even though I don’t fully believe it. After some mumbo jumbo involving ‘changing life through our perceptions,’ he hands her a drink and, when she asks what it is, just says “It’s good, try it.” That’s…not a very strong endorsement. But they hook up anyway. To the tune of a really crappy alternative rock song.

As you can imagine, the drink has an effect on Nicole that she really didn’t want, as she starts throwing up in the car and when they get back home she attacks him. She probably would have killed him if it weren’t for…an actor that nobody hears about anymore yet was popular as a child! Yes, it’s Corey Feldman, reprising his role as Edgar Frog and perhaps taking the name a little too literally. He sounds like he has a frog stuck in his throat. This character is just silly all around. I know that’s what they were going for, but man is this stupid! He drinks a shake made of eggs, garlic and holy water for breakfast. He talks in the most ridiculously silly monotone ever put on celluloid.

"I need MORE SCENERY to chew, stat!"

And get this. When Chris goes over to his house the next day and asks how he knows so much about vampires, he replies, with utmost seriousness, comic books. That’s right, comic books. He…says that vampires getting killed by only stakes to the heart are a myth, but somehow comic books have the right answers. Hundreds of years of vampire fiction debunked by some shmuck in a trailer with vampire comic books, isn’t this movie wonderful? Bram Stoker doesn’t have it right, but guys in their mothers’ basements making comic books for a total audience of five do. God!

So let’s recap: In a surfing town, all the surfers are vampires. They like to prey on tourists and convert them to be vampires, too. The only guy who knows anything about how to stop them is a freak surfboard repairman who lives in a trailer, drinks concentrated garlic, eggs and holy water and reads comic books. Stupid enough yet?

Nicole: “Do you know how it is for me to want to drink blood? Do you know how disgusting that is? I’m a vegetarian!”

...

I rest my case. This movie is clearly off its rocker, and any attempts of mine to try and make sense of it now would be futile…as well as inadvisable. I’m having way too much fun with this one, so I might as well just…ride it out till the end. This is getting pretty long, though…

So the cops don’t help him at all with finding the missing Nicole, merely content with saying “We have a system” in response to any form of logic. Chris gets taken to the vampires’ den by one of their guys, where he’s ‘initiated in’ by Shane – which basically means a big, flashy car chase scene with the police that doesn’t further the plot at all. We get a scene with the aunt which is actually pretty sensible, as it shows she knows her priorities and doesn’t like the way her niece and nephew are handling themselves – very understandable. But she ruins it by saying “You guys need to stop acting like a bunch of vampires.” Huh. Irony. It’s funny. Get it?

At the beach at night later on, the vampires and Chris pick up a group of girls and start prepping them for feeding time. It results in this:

They obviously are the Reptilian Vampires, the ones who took their doctrine from Python in the Lightspeed movie. Tremble in fear. I know I did.

Edgar Frog shows up and delivers lines like “Who ordered stake?” while holding up two wooden stakes, and I have to say this time around he looks like he’s having a lot more fun. I mean, the guy says with a straight face that he is an ONLINE MINISTER and got ordained by clicking a few buttons. That’s so stupid it’s awesome. And hey, it worked for Hunter S. Thompson to become a doctor, so why not? But yeah, this guy pretty much ends up with all the good lines. Like after Shane gets set on fire: “Build a man a fire…he’s warm for a day. Light a man on fire…he’s warm for the rest of his life.” That’s so silly it’s…well, you know.

To make a long story short, they kill Shane, turn back into humans, Edgar Frog tells them he’ll send a bill, and they go home. The story ends with the aunt giving them a lecture thinking they’ve been doing reefer this whole time, and they drink some beer to forget the whole thing after she leaves. Which should be anyone’s reaction.

"It's okay sis, I'll never make you act in another movie about surfing vampires again."

Okay, okay, this movie wasn’t all THAT bad, I admit. It’s bad, sure, but it’s a fun kind of bad, and you can tell nobody really expected it to be anything else. Corey Feldman is pretty hilarious for all his hamminess, the whole surfing vampire thing is just hysterical and the movie is just kind of fun. It’s a trashy kind of fun, but if you want some laughs, a few beautiful young women and a few good action scenes…well you could do worse. Not as bad as I was expecting. And that's all I have for you right now.