Paul William Scott Anderson’s fifteenth film “In the Lost Lands” combines his signature post-apocalyptic charm with fantastical set pieces, and a bare-bones script that throws everything on the table. But, in the process, Anderson forgets to find a conclusion.
The result is a muddled mess, with a digital sheen not seen since Zack Snyder’s “Rebel Moon” films. Comical zooms, animated transitions, and some bloody monster violence — it’s safe to say Paul W. S. Anderson is back, whether you like that or not. Luckily, I’ve learned to warm up to it.
Of his monumental filmography, I’ve seen two (now three) films: “Event Horizon” and “Alien vs. Predator (AVP).” Both films work better when they lean less on their thematic elements and more on their bloody action. In between the twenty-one-year gap between “AVP” and today, Anderson had more than enough time to refine said flaws. “In the Lost Lands” is this final test, culminating in a wasteland film that reaches so far into each extreme that its tonal whiplash feels complementary rather than headache-inducing.
Don’t get me wrong — it is headache-inducing. As an elite AMC investor, I swindled myself a large blue raspberry ICEE during the trailers, and that froze my brain just enough that I could comprehend George R. R. Martin’s narrative fluff.
Yeah, I’m sure that’s worth mentioning: “In the Lost Lands” is based on Martin’s short story of the same name, written for an anthology of other shorts in the early 80s. I cannot tell you if this film is a good adaptation, but I can say that I trust Paul W. S. Anderson to adapt “Elden Ring.”
The adaptation follows Gray Alys, played by Anderson’s muse Milla Jovovich, a sorceress navigating the dangers and perils of the Lost Lands. Accompanying her is Boyce (Dave Bautista), a gunslinger drifter with more going on than meets the eye. Together, they explore the Lost Lands, bumping into computer-generated enemies along the way. While they have cable car shootouts and explosions in an abandoned nuclear reactor, the Overlord dynasty back home splinters into a revolution.
Their epic quest is largely rendered in Unreal Engine, a 3D animation toll used for triple AAA video game development, not normally used in proper filmmaking. The outcome is super experimental, and mostly works, if you know that going in. If not, it may look incredibly uncanny.
Of the three films I’ve seen, this is by far Anderson’s most political. In between lens flares, there’s talk of man-beasts, gender distrust and a war decimating everything long ago. In the Lost Lands, patriarchy is no more; instead there’s grand manipulation akin to the Bene Gesserit in Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune.” The film is wildly progressive and touches on subject matters I hadn’t considered walking into the theater.
By the rip-roaring, guns-blazing finale, culminating in a political upheaval and a secret hidden monster film (putting down Leigh Whannel’s “Wolf Man” in the process), the narrative is shuffled and molded over and over again until it becomes a paradox of a paradox of a cliché.
A high-fantasy epic on a $50 million budget, “In the Lost Lands” sits right above the five-dollar DVD pantheon of Anderson’s accompanying work. Whereas Paul Thomas Anderson gets Criterion Collections and 70mm scans, Paul W. S. Anderson gets word of mouth and Redbox rentals — until Trump pulls that out of America’s budget as well.
Still, like the great Taylor Swift song, “It hits different,” and if you need a hundred minutes of pure escapism from our dystopian reality, “In the Lost Lands” works wonders. Apocalypse aside, it’s nice to see a film with this level of interesting filmmaking and stylistic visual effects on the big screen. It’s just unfortunate “Mickey 17” is playing right next door.
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