Lost on a Mountain in Maine

Speaking as a Mainer, this is a great Maine story don right. Authentic to the era (1939) it's a true story of a boy lost on Mount Katahdin, a preserved wilderness unlike any other park. Inter cut with actual interview clips from rangers, family members and friends, it has an authentic feel that a regular movie could not duplicate. The actors do a great job. The emotions between mother and son, father and son, brother and brother ring completely true to life. The one drawback is that much was filmed in New York and for Mainers it sure doesn't look like Maine; others won't notice. This is a perfect film for kids age 10 and up. A real family film. We need more of those. Take your kids, your grand-kids, go yourself; you won't be disappointed.

I loved that clips of people portraited by these actors were interspersed into the film.

The director has a keen eye and it is obvious that he is a student of great film. Instead of critiquing the acting, light, sound, cinematography etc... of the film I found myself quickly immersed in the story. Always the sign of a great film.

I found myself comparing the boys relationships with their parents to my own relationships with my own daughters. This film brought out more emotion in me than I expected.

My hat goes off to the cast and crew, especially the director who it seems has really stepped up and hit a home run at such an early mark in his career.

Story based on a true event when in 1939 a kid is with his family trying to climb Mt. Katahdin but they all wimp out and the kid gets pissed and runs off, only to get lost for 9 days in the wilds.

Sad to say this is a long, dreary film with amateurish acting. There are some old interviews with people involved and even some actual newsreel footage when the kid is saved. But the story is badly told. If I remember right, this premiered this past summer at the Maine International Film Festival in Waterville.

For me the real cheat is that the entire film, despite the title, was made in Upstate New York and some Katahdin shots were actually just a model of the mountain in a studio. There's also stock aerial footage. No Maine. The family was actually from Rye, NY and only summered in Maine a few years.

Also, there's all this baloney "lore" about the Indian spirit that haunts Katahdin, which I never heard before in my life. It could be true, I suppose.

Good story, badly told.

Why this went to theaters is beyond me. Bad acting, bad cinematography, and the director should have researched Maine Wildlife cause we don't have giant millipedes nor jungle birds. Pretty sure the majority of the film wasn't even filmed in Maine. Now as for the story, severely altered from the truth, and aside from the search it just follows a boy walking through the forest, nothing exciting or dramatic. Frankly the whole film was quite boring. They should have gotten Ron Howard to direct, maybe he could have put some life into the film. Direct to Streaming was all this film deserved and that's being generous.

Period film set in 1939 from the Christian/Conservative "Angel Studios", though other than the odd prayer here and there, the religious element is not that obvious.

Production values are high but the whole thing feels more a generic streaming product rather than an actual film. The characters are paper-thin, forgettably-drawn and I didn't warm or connect to any of them. The film is supposed to be about how a boy survived for days in the wilderness, but other than catching a fish once, all of the nuts and bolts of his survival are missing. The majority of the film is just people walking in random woods with no sense of place and no landmarks for the audience to navigate by.

It's shot with expensive cameras but then so are TV adverts for package holidays, and I'd find it hard to tell the difference, so I can't recommend it as either a story or a work of art.