Lost After Dark

A throwback slasher movie that is reminiscent of the 70s but especially the 80s. Grindhouse is sort of back, because of people who loved the movies back then, bringing them back to life (if you'll excuse the pun). With all the little things and flaws that made those movies ... what they are. Like bad lightning or missing reels (an inside joke sort of, though might be confusing for some who never had that experience with a movie before) and things like that.

The special (blood) effects are pretty decent for a low budget movie, the characters as shallow as you'd expect (also very bad choices, but that's to be expected to). You can have fun with this, if you feel nostalgic or if you're generally a fan of slasher movies

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.

Slasher movie set in 1984. A group of high school friends steal a school bus and head off for a weekend away but when the vehicle runs out of fuel in the middle of nowhere they seek refuge in a seemingly abandoned old farm house. Needless to say somebody is still living there, and they have homicidal and cannibalistic tendencies! This is clearly meant to be an homage to the slasher movies of the late 1970's/early 1980's. In fact by 1984 the period known as the Golden Age of the slasher boom was pretty much over. Anyway I like the idea but sadly it is unconvincing, to me it looks like a film made in 2015 trying but failing to look 1984. It is simply impossible to replicate the feeling of all those great movies from the 80's, a period that I recall with much fondness. Plus there was no CGI then. Robert Patrick is in the cast, which is great, but doesn't help the 1984 cause. He was in Terminator 2 back in 1991, where he looked much younger than he does in Lost After Dark, which is set 7 years before T2, But that's just a personal thing for me! As a slasher movie it is pretty decent, we get all the stereotypical characters but a curve ball is delivered when one of the characters, who I wrongly assumed would make it to the finale, is one of the first to be killed out of the group. Apart from the obligatory opening kill the first half is pretty much gore free, a tad slow. But the second half makes up for this with plenty of gory deaths. Surprisingly no nudity. I picked this up dirt cheap on DVD and glad I did so, certainly give it another shot.

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...

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.