Lost After Dark

It was an okay cheap horror film. Nothing great and nothing new to see. I won't spoil it, but the first death was shocking; I didn't expect that. The kills were okay. Even though Toby wasn't the main character, I was surprised he turned out to be so likable. They don't usually make a character the audience will care about in these types of movies.\ Robert Patrick's character was silly. I don't know if he was hurting for money, or he just wanted to be in a horror film.

The bad guy was stupid. You've seen his sort of "can't die bad guy" in multiple cheap horror films.

I gave this a 4-star rating. If you must watch all the slasher films out there, give this a viewing, but don't expect much. However, there are horror films that are far worse than this.

Capitalizing on 80's slasher genre can work as a premise of satiric horror, but it doesn't excuse outdated delivery such as stiff acting and poor pacing. The idea is to put myriad of old horror antics in attempt to create gore as well as slight comedy. Unfortunately, it's not even better than actual 80's cheap movie.

Plot is as simple as they come, a group of students venture to the woods in the most dire condition possible, then meets a psycho killer. It'd be a decent popcorn flick if not for, mostly, the jarring acting. The movie goes on a way to depict stereotypes, making the actors spew nonsense in incredibly overly dramatic way. Some of the scenes resemble blooper of actual classic slasher or cheesy commercial. Audience already knows that it's a throwback, so there's no reason to force every smirk or gasp to be ridiculous.

The entire thing looks plastic, down to the script which not only sounds random but incredibly pretentious. So, when the characters talk about fate or other serious issue, it's far from believable. Not to mention the movie spends quite some time for these characters, especially on first half, to make audience invest of stale personalities. Granted, one or two might be relatable, but as they interact with other characters the shallow performance underwhelms any distinct trait.

At the very least, it does partially deliver the expected gore. There are a few timidly shocking moments, but even those are simple stabbing or head crushing, certainly nothing you haven't seen before. For fans it may be mildly amusing, casual viewer might not be so lenient.

Lost After Dark tries to give a homage, or cheap imitation of classic slasher, however it only trips and falls to the same flaws from three decades ago.

I've got to say, as someone who grew up in the 80's watching almost every horror movie that came out (BIIIG thank you to sharing a room with my sister, who was 7 years older...) when I saw that they were calling this an homage to those movies I was very leery. One hour in I decided to, after years of using IMDb, make an account just to review the movie!! From the cheesy cliché characters to the cliché plot line.. Totally brought me back to those awful movies my sister would force me to watch growing up. The only thing I didn't really like was the overly played 'Nam vet (yes, also an awesome cliché!!!) Mr.C played by the sadly underused Robert Patrick! All in all, actually not to bad of a movie

I came across this recently and being a massive fan of slashers that I am, this intrigued me given it's throwback feel, okay a lot of these have come out over the last decade or so, and a lot of them don't work, like looking way too glossy and over produced to have that classic era feel, meaning very few pull it off successfully, as everything else like plot, effects and cast all fall short. But in this case, I am quite happy to say does have that vintage feel pulled off to perfection, and does have decent gore effects and a great cast.

But what stops this from being a classic piece is that the movie itself does kinda fall apart in some places and can't help but feel that there's something missing. For now I am gonna talk about the positives, firstly the production design, the sets and the 80's fashion is top notch and the cinematography is simply stunning, the retro look and feel really does transport you to that time and era. The creepy farmhouse was a brilliant setting and does have an unsettling tone to it, as does the killers who while not an iconic slasher villain; he does have a creepy presence.

Also the cast of teens really make this work and always love the stereotype roles in these movies, but in this case they are not the usual bland run of the mill forgettable teens, they were very decent. Kendra Leigh Timmins who plays Adrienne the virginal good girl was really good and likable in her role and made me really feel when events took a total unexpected turn. Robert Patrick as the principal was totally silly and over the top, but fun. Jesse Carnacho as the fat kid Tobe was really likable and showed depth to his role. Elise Gatien, who plays the best friend role Jamie, would be a disposable character in any other type of film, but here she really steps it up and becomes a really good believable forefront character. Justin Kelly who plays the kind hearted jock Sean was really decent and should have lasted longer, Stephen James as the black kid was just okay, didn't really shine amongst the rest. Also Alexander Calvert was fun as the jerk bad boy character. Then finally Mark Wiede did good as the killer Joad, while not as memorable as other slasher villains, he was menacing enough.

Now for the lesser qualities, firstly despite a good set up, I just didn't feel a sense of dread or tension throughout the movie, while it was mostly predictable, apart from the first of the teens to die, which did totally take me by surprise, but apart from that it just became a bit slow paced and lagged in some parts. For a start the situation that these teens were in, they could have easily just left the area at any given time, but instead stayed around, just didn't feel realistic to me, if they were somehow trapped at the farmhouse, then the tension could have been cranked up a bit for me.

All in all yes "Lost After Dark" is a very decent throwback retro slasher that should definitely be looked at, but just needs a bit of fine tuning, and adds in some chills and tension.

I pretty much agree with the others here (4 so far) The director did a nice job of setting up the characters and the general feeling of the era pretty well, but ultimately and unfortunately there really just wasn't much of a story to go along with it.

The ironic thing is that usually it is SPECIFICALLY the acting itself that is so atrocious in these low-budget Horror films and many times completely ruins what could have been a good story (please see my review of the recent Gawd-Awful 'HONEYMOON' for example) But... in this case, the characters and the acting itself were just fine for the type of film it is, BUT everything else just didn't really add up to much. So, in this case it turned out kind of backwards from the way many other films seem to go...

As mentioned by others, Robert Patrick was good in his role and the girl's Dad was just about right. Too bad... because almost ALWAYS, it is precisely the terrible acting or characters that are so grating in films like this, but these ones here are actually fairly decent compared to most. So, it leaves you feeling that you really would have liked to see them in the context of a much better story, but that is just the way it seemed to turn out, in my lowly and wretched opinion.

Heh... I kind of feel that my REVIEW is rather shallow too, but quite honestly, there just isn't much more to say. I gave it a '5' only because I thought the setting, characters, and actors were pretty decent, otherwise the story overall would have gotten less...

So, basically.... move along home... nothing to see here...