Milia Jovovich and Dave Bautista star in Paul WS Anderson’s In the Lost Lands, based on the George RR Martin short story.
It should have been a recipe for success. Milia Jovovich and Paul WS Anderson’s collaborations have wrought b-movie after b-movie success. Adding in the physically imposing charisma of Dave Bautista. The kick of adapting a story by George RR Martin. In the Lost Lands with all of its pedigree, it doesn’t connect all its dots, leaving us a film that’s a could have or should have.
A tale of magic and monsters in the post-apocalypse of Earth. A Queen (Amara Okereke) tasks Gray Alys (Jovovich) to attain the powers of a shapeshifter for her. Alys employs the only person that can find a shapeshifter, Boyce (Bautista), who leads them on the treacherous quest to find the shapeshifter. Along the way, their quest is thwarted by those who would look to overthrow the Queen to cede her power.
Anderson’s films have always felt tactile and real. Something that In the Lost Lands feels nothing like. That is its biggest problem. The movie feels like a 90-minute cut scene from a video game. At no point does it feel like there is anything substantive on screen other than the actors. The lack of the physical in a film that feels dependent on the physical takes the narrative air out of the entire enterprise.
That isn’t to say the film isn’t beautiful. Anderson is working with his long-time cinematographer Glen MacPherson to create a sumptuous world. The costuming by Milena Jaroszek and production design by Lukasz Trzcinzki is a unique mashup of the medieval and post-apocalyptic. Every department seems to be on point, but the rendering and lack of any physical really hinders everything about the film making it almost impossible to commit to the narrative.
Adding to matters, both Jovovich and Bautista, normally charismatic performers, are both flat lines through the runtime. Even during action scenes where both truly shine as physical performers, there appears to be no energy. That goes for the entire cast who seem to sleepwalk through the movie without any sense of urgency that the story requires.
In the Lost Lands is an unfortunate miss considering the talent behind it and what we know they are capable of. One only needs to look at the dizzying heights Anderson and Jovovich took the Resident Evil franchise for proof positive of what they are capable of. That style and wit are not present here and one has to wonder why.