Lost Colony

I wouldn't be so hard on this film. No one has ever been able to give a good account of what really happened, and the whole mystery is there to speculate and to guess and write stories about. Sci-fi channel has had it's good stories and dull ones, and this is not at good as I was hoping for, but I don't believe it was half bad. It could have been better if they had a seasoned director and producer who is use to doing mystery/suspense thrillers, but I don't think that was the case. I wonder what George Lucas could have done with it or someone with a little more imagination. Besides, think about it, we didn't see the entire movie, we saw the edited version and I willing to bet that it would have been a lot more scarier and would have made a lot more reasonable sense if those parts were in there. Sometimes I wish when they came out with movies on DVD, they would give you a choice of seeing the extended version with the deleted scenes or the theater movie.

As for the acting, the movie, just like X-men III, it seemed very rushed and I am sure they were times constraints. However, actors do a better job when they have more time to get into the part and make some suggestions of their own and I am not sure that happened. I think they were just given the part and told to "do it!" which also does not make for a good movie. But, you can't blame the actors who are given a script that they can only do so much with and I think the actors did the best they could and were not able to live up to their talent.

I also think if just a little bit more money was put into it, it would have been a better picture. I hate it when things "happen" and there is a reason why they may be happening, but no one tells or says what it is. You see that in a lot of horror movies. People want to know background history, legends, etc. I thought a halfway descent effort was made for this. But like Eddie Murphy says, "Why do white people stay in a place that is haunted?" I am white but I would have gotten the HE** out.

The whole incident is a bit haunting itself. It is very hard to really know how many Native American nations and tribes there really were. Many died out before the settlers came and some were dying off about that time. But, the word on the tree, "Croatian" (SP) does seem familiar and I do believe it was the name of a Native American tribe that may have befriended the colonist and took them into their tribe and that word was put on their so that the coming settlers would know where to find them. But, instead, the just left it a mystery and may have wanted to on purpose because they may have wanted a plan or something to scare people about in the event of any indigenous people in the area they wanted to get rid of. I mean, look what happened after wards? I believe that those colonist did not want to return and stayed with the Croatians since a lot of tribes were nomadic during the seasons. That is just a theory with no scientific backing. But it beats thinking that they were slaughtered because the Native Americans were blamed for a lot of things they didn't do and we nearly committed Genocide.

In 1587, 117 brave men and women set sail from Britain to establish the first English colony in Americas. They land on Roanoke Island, off the coast of Virginia. They build a settlement and plant crops. After a period, a group of colonists finds the local fortress deserted with the corpse of a suicidal hanged in decomposition and a warning written with blood on the ceiling. Ananias Dare (Adrian Paul) is assigned to be in charge of the colony while their leader will bring supplies. Sooner Ananias learns that the forest is haunted by evil spirits that feed themselves of human soul and that they are chasing his new-born daughter that has a pure soul.

"Wraiths of Roanoke" is a lame and boring film with a terrible story, bad acting and direction, awful art direction and costumes and poor special effects. Further, it is too long and repetitive along 95 minutes running time, giving the sensation that the annoying story will never end. This flick is highly recommended for insomnious viewers that do not want to swallow sleeping pills. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): "Espíritos da Floresta" ("Spirits of the Forest")

Stumbling upon the 2007 movie "Lost Colony: The Legend of Roanoke" by random luck here in 2025, and never actually having heard about it, of course I opted to watch the movie, on account of it being a horror movie of sorts, and a movie that I hadn't already seen.

Of course I am familiar with the story of the Roanoke settlement, so I did have an idea of what I was in for here, more or less.

Writer Rafael Jordan put together an okay enough script. The movie boasts it is based on real events, yeah, well let's just let the simmer for a bit, shall we? The movie proved to be entertaining enough for what it was, a relatively low budget horror movie, so don't get your hopes up here.

There were a couple of familiar faces on the cast list, with the likes of Adrian Paul, Frida Farrell, Rhett Giles and Michael Teh. The acting performances in the movie were fair.

"Lost Colony: The Legend of Roanoke" looked and felt like a TV movie, for better or worse. The special effects in the movie were okay, but a bit on the cheap and cheesy side.

My rating of director Matt Codd's 2007 movie "Lost Colony: The Legend of Roanoke" lands on a generous four out of ten stars.

Lost Colony: The Legend of Roanoke did actually look as though it would be somewhat tolerable. And while nothing great, considering SyFy's dubious track-record it is. This is by far one of the better-looking SyFy projects, with stunning locations and scenery and photography that does look as though care went into it instead of the usual dull, slapdash kind. The score is decent, not too over-bearing or sluggish and the acting shows a sense of spirit and an effort to not be too bland or overdone. However, while I appreciated the moral and philosophical aspects, the script could have done with being more thoughtful and less cheesy and stilted, the story suffers from a lack of atmosphere and poorly choreographed and less-than-thrilling battles and while the characters are less stereotypical than characters in other SyFy movies(the creature and disaster movies of theirs are the worst when it comes to this) not much is done to make them interesting to let us relate to them.

Overall, not bad but not desperately good either, just average. 5/10 Bethany Cox

Scifi channel has a reputation for picking up awful B-listers to fill out its empty Saturday nights. Unfortunately, Wraiths of Roanoke is no exception. Within the first ten minutes, the acting will tip you off that this'll be an unimpressive title; indeed, the acting is very similar to such mid-budget series as Stargate SG1 and Painkiller Jane. Of course, the fault doesn't lie entirely with the actors, only so much can be done with the stale and entirely trite dialogue.

The story isn't much better. The basic outline involves British colonials, who intend to inhabit an island, finding their old garrison "abandoned" (read: dead). The Native Americans (Croats) give vague warnings about some mysterious danger, only clarifying things when the first people die. From then on, the settlers (who can't abandon the island for a few reasons, some of which are inconsequential given the threat) are forced to contend with evil spirits.

It's supposedly based on true events, which seems to be a big selling point. However, given the film, I can't imagine how many liberties were taken. I imagine the only truth involves the abandoned fort--which could've just been sacked or what have you. Wraiths happens to be one of those films where you can see budgetary constraints in everything and it suffers for it.