The first Lost Boys movie was not a big budget thriller…it was a campy movie about a family that finds themselves in the midst of a town overrun by vampires and surf nazis…though the vampires proved to be slightly more problematic. Despite some obvious shortcomings, Lost Boys was a fun movie featuring the Coreys when they were still cool (when Corey Haim did Prayer of the Rollerboys, I knew his good days had come and gone).

Fast forward 21 years to 2008…Hollywood has officially run out of ideas. And with the success of Rambo (while the 4th Rambo movie, actually the first one to just be called Rambo) and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, someone said “hey, remember The Lost Boys? I bet we can get the Coreys to do a sequel!” And Lost Boys: The Tribe was born.

To their credit, the makers of the Lost Boys 2 paid tribute to the first movie in a number of ways – they got both Coreys, they hired Keifer Sutherland’s half-brother to play the vampire, they had surf nazis, they covered the main theme song (with the eery “thou shall not…” chants), and Edgar (Corey Feldman) reminded us that no two vampires die the same way…but they all try to take you with them.

These elements made the movie better than I had anticipated (though I wasn’t expecting much). However, they fell far short of the first movie in some crucial ways. Most importantly, they attempted to mirror the first movie by making it about two siblings, with one trying to save the other…but this felt weird. First off, when Chris (Tad Hilgenbrink) and Nicole (Autumn Reeser) show up at the beginning, moving into a house together, they look more like a couple than brother and sister. I think this is because they hired a 27-year-old woman to play a 17-year-old girl. Until her age is revealed much later, I’m wondering why these two grown-up siblings are living together.

The next big failure is the forced dialogue. Chris and Nicole both use this “(s)he’s family!” tagline to explain their protective behavior…and it just never comes across as catchy as they’re obviously hoping it would be.

Final Thoughts:
(SPOILER WARNING) While this movie suffers from some poor dialogue and a mediocre plotline, it wasn’t all bad. The worst part is that Corey Haim is only in the movie for about 30 seconds, where it’s revealed that he’s now a vampire (and that doesn’t even happen until they interrupt the end credits for his scene). If you eject the DVD when the credits start rolling, you’ll miss it. The DVD features two alternate endings, both of which are better than the ending they chose. Both set up the Coreys for a third movie where they would hunt a new head Vampire, Corey Feldman’s brother, Alan Frog.

Rating:

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