The Lost
2005, USA
Directed by: Chris Sivertson
Written by: Jack Ketchum (novel), Chris Sivertson
Producers: Lucky McKee, Mike McKee, Shelli Merrill, Chris Sivertson
Starring: Marc Senter, Shay Astar, Alex Frost, Megan Henning
Genre: Drama
Rating: 18A
DVD Distributor: Anchor Bay/Starz Home Entertainment
Website: http://www.thelostmovie.net/
Running Time: 119 minutes

The future of horror has been here for a while. It’s not Japanese films about ghostly kids with hair like underage Type O Negative groupies, and it isn’t Clive Barker dressing a Steven King novel as a court jester. It’s author Jack Ketchum, sitting quietly in his basement, pulling the eyelids off a prostitute to make sure he gets the word-picture right in his latest book.

Ketchum has been writing horror novels steadily since the 1980s. However, his monsters don’t have the fangs, cheekbones and bathhouse couture of Anne Rice, or the earthen supernaturalism of King. What they do have is guns and cruelty, and his hard-hitting splatterpunk novels have a gritty realism that makes then all the more terrifying. His books are like true crime novels written with the exploitative thrust of a gonzo porn script. And director/screenwriter Chris Sivertson’s adaptation of Ketchum’s 2001 novel The Lost captures that essence almost perfectly.

An important caveat: The rest of this review will be written as if Sivertson had not directed last year’s Lindsay Lohan debacle I Know Who Killed Me. Because The Lost, though it slows in the middle and suffers from the occasionally tremulous performance, shows a strong grounding in visceral horror and a nascent sense of experimentation. The film stars Marc Senter as Ray Pye, a young sociopath who kills two girls at a campground on the same sort of whim that might send me to the corner store to buy Doritos. Four years later, he’s still free, but the swirling psychosis within is making him twitchy, like a meth cook near a boiling pot of ammonia.

Senter chews the scenery, it must be said, stalking around in black jeans and bolos as if daring Johnny Cash to sue and popping neck veins every time he delivers a line. But when the film’s moving at a proper clip, it works, and Sivertson often succeeds in using editing and 3^rd year film school optical printing to keep the film moving. But when The Lost lags, as it does in the second act, things threaten to unravel. But they never do, and a killer opening and hallucinogenic ending paint a disturbing picture that leaves an impression, or at least a scar. The script is a descent rather than a journey, but there are some subplots and secondary characters that drive the film forward. Detective Shilling, played by Michael Bowen, is just such a character, convinced of Pye’s guilt but unable to prove it. Megan Henning’s subtle and sympathetic portrayal of Sally Richmond, a precocious teen who catches Pye’s attention provides another highlight of the film, even with her eyelids intact.

Rating: 7 on 10

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