Lost After Dark

Pros: Robert Patrick is getting work

Cons: unoriginal, so dark you can't see most of it, generic, can't decide if it's meta, trying to be 80s with zero charm, cannot care about the characters, generic stereotypes, music is bad.

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...

Set in Michigan in 1984 this movie pays homage to the 1980s style American slasher horror genre and stars Robert Patrick of X-Files and True Blood fame.

In typical US teen fashion some kids steal a school bus in order to take a 'secret' getaway to a hunting cabin in the woods to party, unfortunately they run out of gas in the middle of nowhere (surprise, surprise!). The situation soon takes a nasty turn when they trespass through an old house that they believe to be abandoned, and are soon stalked and murdered by a cannibalistic killer.

Lost After Dark is just an average slasher horror, bringing in nothing fresh or exciting, and despite the seemingly silly inclusion of Robert Patrick's annoying character, it's actually not THAT bad of a movie. However, it does get a bit stupid and predictable towards the end.

Lost After Dark is still worth a watch for those who enjoy 80s slasher style horrors.

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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.