In a few short days, In The Lost Lands will hit theaters, bringing viewers into a post-apocalyptic fantasy tale dreamed up by none other than A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin. In The Lost Lands is one of the many short stories Martin published in the 1980s, and this new film brings it to bombastic life on screen. Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson (Resident Evil, Monster Hunter), In The Lost Lands is about a witch named Gray Alys (Milla Jovovich), who can grant any wish — though you might wish she didn't, by the time her price becomes clear.
When Gray Alys is contracted to procure the ability to turn into a werewolf for a queen, she must journey out into the wasteland known as the Lost Lands. The hitch is that the Lost Lands are filled with dangers; she'll need a guide. Enter Boyce (Dave Bautista), a hunter who spends most of his days wandering that inhospitable terrain. He knows it better than anyone, which makes him the perfect companion for the witch.
I've had a chance to watch In The Lost Lands, and have returned from the waste to tell you what I've seen. This will be a SPOILER-FREE review, since the movie isn't out until March 7. So whether you're familiar with Martin's original tale or this'll be your first outing with Gray Alys, read on without fear — of this review, at least. As for the movie, well...let's talk about it.
In The Lost Lands is a campy, often absurd ride through the post-apocalypse
Let's start with the positives. In The Lost Lands stays relatively true to the overall arc of Martin's original short story, with Boyce and Gray Alys going on their quest together, and the ultimate resolution of that quest. The short story is a fairly obscure one in Martin's very large catalog, but it's a credit to Anderson and the writers that they recognized its twists and ending were strong enough to build the framework of the movie around. Yes, there's more action, more camp, more outrageous set pieces, and plenty of somewhat silly dialogue. Yes, it's set in a post-apocalypse instead of a fantasy world. And yes, it is a thrill-ride action movie instead of a broodingly dark fantastical horror story like the original work. But on the whole, this is recognizably the same story as George R.R. Martin told, and it deserves credit for that, even if a few of the choices left me scratching my head.
Speaking of action sequences, most of those are well-choreographed and have good special effects. "Fun" is a word that comes to mind when I think of Paul W.S. Anderson movies, and I had plenty of it watching Milla Jovovich and Dave Bautista fight their way across the Lost Lands. Jovovich doing spinning martial arts kicks feels like a trademark stamp of her and Anderson's movies at this point, and many such kicks were delivered to the bloodthirsty religious zealots who pursue Gray Alys and Boyce. No, Gray Alys does not know martial arts in the short story; don't think about it too hard.
Jovovich in particular gives a solid performance. I've been enjoying her in movies for years now, and she brings the same level of intensity and dedication to this film that she has many of her others. Bautista is also good as Boyce, though I will say there were times he almost felt miscast. Boyce is portrayed very much as a ladies man who sleeps his way around the wasteland; Bautista is less believable in that mode than he is as a stone-cold killer evading death in one encounter after the next, or cracking deadpan jokes while he tosses around a two-headed rattlesnake.
But perhaps that's less a Bautista issue than a way-the-movie-handles-romance issue. Boyce isn't the only character who ends up in a romantic entanglement in this film, and I don't think there was a single romantic pairing that actually felt natural to me. Every single one felt forced in some way or another. It's just not one of the movie's strengths.
There are a few other elements that distracted me to the point of breaking my immersion. One is that some of the dialogue is a bit wooden, in a way that makes it feel obvious when a line is pulled directly from Martin's story and when it isn't. I'm all for adaptations making up all their own dialogue, but in this case the juxtaposition between the two styles is distractingly incongruous.
On the other hand, there are moments that feel almost like In The Lost Lands is trying too hard to throw a bone to viewers who would mostly know Martin's work from Game of Thrones. The worldbuilding for the movie is interesting enough, mostly taking place in the wasteland surrounding the last city on Earth, a repressive metropolis ruled by a religious order and the concubine queen responsible for conceiving the next supreme leader. Amara Okereke is committed as Queen Melange, and she's a delight to watch chew dialogue while bedecked in absurdly extravagant outfits.
But she and other characters also speak with inexplicable British accents, while yet others have drawls out of the old west or the modern metropolitan United States. I'm not entirely sure how those accents managed to manifest in this post-apocalyptic world, or why British English has become the dialect of the ruling class; it feels more like the team behind the movie thought proper British-sounding rulers were a George R.R. Martin-style thing to do, because of Game of Thrones, and so they did it. They didn't include them because it made any sense for this particular post-apocalyptic world. You also feel that in the politic-heavy material revolving around Queen Melange and her cohort when Gray Alys isn't around. All of those scenes are invented for the film, rather than drawn from the source material.
The great irony of all this, of course, is that Martin's original In The Lost Lands story is a fantasy, not a far-future Mad Max-ian story with magic like this movie. But this post-apocalyptic world is so thoroughly realized that the few parts of the movie that sound more like fantasy than sci-fi are what feel out of place, even if, technically, they're the parts that hue closest to the tone of the original work.
I also couldn't help wondering how budgetary constraints effected the film. In The Lost Lands was filmed for a reported $55 million; not a small amount by any measure, but also a fairly tight budget for a special effects-driven action film. Most of the actual magic from Gray Alys looks great, and I liked some of the smart choices the movie makes about how to visualize things like her mind control. But then the characters get on horses, and it's very, very obvious that no horse was on set since almost every single horse shot is an extreme close-up of the characters' faces. I'd almost rather the movie have opted to just have Gray Alys and Boyce walk across the Lost Lands on foot, rather than constantly pretend they were mounted up on horses when they clearly weren't.
To sum up, In The Lost Lands feels like a campy B-movie in the truest sense. Zealots wearing knight templar tabards throw on aviators to duke it out with a kopesh-wielding witch and her cowboy mercenary bodyguard, there's a werewolf, some zombie-like creatures, and plenty of interesting and unexpected magic. In The Lost Lands is a movie that wears its schlocky heart on its sleeve, and while it makes some choices that had me chuckling out loud in a bad way, I can't deny I had a good time watching it. If you're looking for a fun way to spend a night at the movies housing some popcorn with friends, this is a good fit. Temper your expectations going in, and neither Gray Alys nor her barbed promises should take you off guard.
Verdict
In The Lost Lands does a decent job of adapting an obscure George R.R. Martin short story, with good performances from its leads and supporting cast, solid action scenes, and interesting worldbuilding. But it also has plenty of blemishes, especially in its dialogue and editing choices, that make it hard to get too invested. Then again, that's probably the idea: this is a post-apocalyptic fantasy romp that revels in its own outlandish campiness, and it makes no apologies for it. While I wish it had stuck a little closer to the tone and style of Martin's short story, it was at least smart enough to lean hard on the very sharp twists and turns of the source material to deliver a satisfying climax. Just don't expect it to be the next great GRRM adaptation, because the sophisticated storytelling of Westeros is nowhere in sight in the Lost Lands.
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