Based on the best-selling book by renowned author Jack Ketchum, The Lost is a psychological thriller about the ennui of small town life and a young, charismatic serial killer who looks like the lead singer of The Killers — sporting mascara, an affected beauty mark and crushed beer cans in his boots to give him a boost in height as well as ego.
Inspired by actual events related to Charles Schmid, the so-called “Pied Piper of Tucson,” The Lost delves into human horror on a fairly mundane level. For sadistic sociopath Ray Pye (Marc Senter, above left), who lives with his (very much alive) mother at the hotel they own and operate together, small-town life is a dead-end road of sex, drugs, liars and losers. Yet Ray’s cajoling charm and intelligence mask a raw temper and insatiable compulsion to lash out.
After shooting a couple girls in the woods (Seduction Cinema staples Misty Mundae, né Erin Brown, and Ruby LaRocca), twentysomething-ish Ray and his two younger acolytes, Jennifer (Shay Astar) and Tim (Alex Frost), go about their business, which consists of biding their time during the day so that they can party and do as they please during the evenings. In an effort to protect the young girlfriend, Sally Richmond (Megan Henning), of an old friend, Eddie Anderson (Ed Lauter), Detective Charles Schilling (Michael Bowen) pays a visit to Ray, to sort of let him know in informal fashion that he’s got his eyes on him. Ray, though, has other options when Sally spurns his amorous advances, and he eventually confesses his act of murder to a new girl, Katherine (Robin Sydney), in a warped effort to impress her. Things come to a depraved head when
Notwithstanding a very brief but strikingly emotional cameo by Dee Wallace-Stone and the appearance of Luke Y. Thompson as “Handsome Country Club Patron,” The Lost is for the most part a meandering (the movie runs just under two hours) ensemble mood piece about vice, violence and psychopathy. Adapted for the screen and directed by Chris Sivertson (I Know Who Killed Me), The Lost bills itself as a suburban fairy tale gone horribly wrong, which I suppose is partially true. But since most of the film unfolds four years after the initial murder, and its effects are largely out of sight and out of mind after the first 15 minutes, there’s a weird disconnect between those events and the present day, even though we obviously know Ray is psychotic. He was the only suspect in those slayings, but Schilling seems awfully resigned to his freedom, and The Lost consequently suffers, since for much of its running time there is simply no direct conflict or ticking-down moral clock driving the movie forward.
What we get instead is a bunch of discrete scenes of hair-trigger temper, some of which work, and some of which don’t. The Lost is a movie that bears some small similarity to young-homicidal-lovers-on-the-lam flicks (Kalifornia, Natural Born Killers, Jimmy and Judy), but the mentor-lover-friend triangle between Ray, Jennifer and Tim isn’t fully explored until Schilling and company come crashing in, via a series of interrogations, in the third act. By that point, through other dawdling scenes (a protracted introduction to Katherine, for instance), you’ve been wanting a fuller, in-all-its-tangled-ingloriousness exploration of the twisted dynamics between the aforementioned trio, not just some post-mortem.
Meanwhile, Senter — as mentioned before, dolled up like the lead singer of The Killers, to mimic some of the Elvis-inspired “peacocking” of Schmid — delivers a performance that’s often forceful and engaging, but ultimately tips over into precious, look-at-me theatrics, with tics, wild gesticulations and snarled asides. It doesn’t help that Sivertson shoots much of the movie in tight close-up, giving viewers a claustrophobic urge to ditch the proceedings even before the most egregious bloodletting commences. Music (composed and rock) is also used liberally, to wildly varying effect.
Forced-play trailers for The Girl Next Door, also from Ketchum, and the forthcoming theatrical release Sex and Death 101 open the DVD, which comes in a regular Amray case that’s then housed in a cardboard slipcover with mock bullet holes on the front. Presented in 2.35:1 widescreen, enhanced for 16×9 televisions, the disc comes with Dolby digital 5.1 surround and Dolby surround 2.0 audio tracks.
As for supplemental features, first up is a rather snooze-inducing audio commentary track with Ketchum (his first such undertaking) and fellow horror novelist Monica O’Rourke. Ketchum offers up a very few interesting tidbits early on, like how the inspiration for the story came from a newspaper clipping from friend and fellow writer Christopher Golden, but he has virtually nothing to say about the production, so while interesting or notable things are unfolding on screen, he’s just as likely to be talking about an idea for another book project, or speech he gave years ago. Thankfully, the rest of the bonus features are a bit better. There are seven minutes worth of audition footage and 16 minutes worth of outtakes, including some random nudity. There’s also a three-and-a-half-minute storyboard sequence and an Easter egg that’s accessible from the bonus menu screen — a two-minute black-and-white short film, Jack and Jill, which gives grim new meaning to picnic offerings. C+ (Movie) B- (Disc)