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.

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.

Capitalizing on 80's slasher genre can work as a premise of satiric horror, but it doesn't excuse outdated delivery such as stiff acting and poor pacing.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.

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.

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