LOST BOYS: THE TRIBE

Chris and Nicole, after the death of their parents, move to their aunt's house in Luna Bay, a town that stretches along the coastal shores and is rich in surfers. One evening, out looking for fun, Chris and Nicole meet the mysterious Shane, a fascinating surfer who quickly seduces young Nicole and who is actually the leader of a fierce gang of vampires that every night sows panic through the city streets. In the light of everything and intent on saving his sister, who is all he has left, Chris will have no choice but to hire the expert vampire hunter Edgar Frog and kill Shane and his entire gang of vampire surfers. More than twenty years after the first film, which over time has become a small cult object among a wide range of enthusiasts, here comes out directly for the home video circuit "Lost Boys: The Tribe". An operation moved by purely nostalgic intentions and to make the fans of Schumacher's film happy, there is no doubt, because making a sequel after all these years and destining it directly to video library consumption without going through the theater is certainly not an indication of economic speculation and commercial maneuver. The intentions that led to the realization of a sequel for "Lost Boys" are certainly noble and appreciable, it is only a pity that what has come out of it is a harmless product without infamy and without praise not up to the task of holding a direct comparison with the previous one (but this we could have expected) and destined unfortunately to be forgotten in a rather short time span. The only "cleverness" that lurks behind it all, but still understandable at least in part, is that of trying to make a film that, despite the obvious sequel matrix, could still be suitable for a rather wide audience: both those who have seen "Lost Boys" and those who have not. In doing so, an attempt was made to obtain a sequel that in many respects could resonate as a remake and capable of limiting the connections with the predecessor to a few secondary elements and consequently be as autonomous as possible. A new story, therefore, with new main characters who act in a town that is not the Santa Carla that Schumacher's film made us know. The connections with the first film are few, all predominantly limited to the presence on the scene of Corey Feldman, again in the role of the vampire hunter Edgar Frog (impressive how time seems not to have passed for him) who, to the joy of fans in a scene, when he is engaged in explaining to Chris the various ways in which vampires can die, will quote himself pronouncing exactly the same words he used twenty-one years earlier to explain the same concept to young Sam. Another reference to the 1987 film is given by a double ending (very curious, in the opinion of the writer) inserted in the middle of the credits in which we can see Sam Emerson (played again by Corey Haim) in some "garments" completely new and unexpected dealing with a feud with Edgar Frog that presumably has been going on for several years. The references to the previous film stop at these few elements, everything else that remains is an autonomous story, but with little imagination, that proceeds keeping a constant eye on the entire structure of the previous film. Here, then, all the characters created for "Lost Boys: The Tribe" are born on the false line of those presented to us in Schumacher's film (it is enough to see above all the character of the aunt, an evident "clone" of the bizarre grandfather of Michael and Sam) and even the story narrated to us in this sequel follows the entire narrative evolution of "Lost Boys" to the letter. At the helm of the project this time is P.J. Pesce (who has already tackled a vampire story with the negligible "From Dusk Till Dawn 3") while in the cast no particularly relevant names, however, worth mentioning are: Tad Hilgenbrink ("American Pie: Band Camp", "The Hills Run Red") in the role of Chris, Angus Sutherland in the role of the mysterious vampire Shane…that is to say the same role that twenty-one years earlier was played by his father and Tom Savini in an appreciable cameo at the beginning of the film. A few steps forward, although not daring much, in the gore/splatter department (in which the first film had shown itself to be very timid); considerably lower the quality of the soundtrack which was one of the major points of interest of "Lost Boys". Surely appreciable the intention of wanting to re-explore the vampire universe of "Lost Boys", but unfortunately the total lack of imagination at the base of the plot (it is not enough to convert the motorcyclists into surfers) does not succeed in giving the work the same liveliness that the previous film had. Watchable, but nothing more. Curiosity: The two protagonists of "The Lost Boys: The Tribe", Chris and his sister Nicole, have the same last name (Emerson) as Michael and Sam from the first film. It is not specified whether there is any family relationship with the old characters or whether the whole thing is limited to a simple citation. In a scene of "The Lost Boys: The Tribe", subsequently cut, Alan Frog also made his appearance, again brought to the screen by Jamison Newlander.