A witch and a hunter roam a post-apocalyptic wasteland in search of a werewolf and pursued by zombie-like cultists in In the Lost Lands, which opens in Prague cinemas this weekend after bowing stateside last week. Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson from a short story by George R.R. Martin, this one is a lot more Resident Evil than Game of Thrones, and largely incoherent on a story level, but still holds a certain appeal for connoisseurs of trash cinema.
While In the Lost Lands has elements of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror, director Anderson has fashioned it as a western. As the film opens, Milla Jovovich‘s character is precariously balancing on a cross with a noose around her neck in a nod to The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly; much of the rest of the film alternates between extreme close-ups of grizzled faces and vast, empty landscapes not unlike the work of Sergio Leone.
The style might have been a necessity rather than a choice: In the Lost Lands was apparently shot on a single studio set in Poland, with actors in front of greenscreens and backdrops filled in by CGI later on. There’s an appealing grunge aesthetic to the look of the exteriors, a kind of Mad Max meets The Crow, but the camera is careful to never get close to them for fear of revealing their artificial nature.
Jovovich plays Gray Alys, a “witch” with vague and incredible powers who is about to be put to death for heresy by religious zealot The Enforcer (Arly Jover) and her legion of cultists, who look like the War Boys from Mad Max: Fury Road but behave like Resident Evil zombies. Alys escapes by simply looking one of them in the eyes, which makes you wonder why she didn’t do that long before ending up in this situation.
Alys is not only a witch but something of a genie, and can “refuse no one,” she emphatically states to the three people in the film who request she grant their wishes, despite her dire warnings of unintended consequences. The first is the Queen (Amara Okereke), who wishes to become a shapeshifter, followed closely by her royal guard Jerais (Simon Lööf), who wishes that Alys fail to grant the Queen’s wish.
In order to both work her way out of this logic game of a genie puzzle, Alys recruits hunter Boyce (Dave Bautista) to lead her through the wastelands in search of a werewolf, from whom she will steal shapeshifting powers. During the journey, they are hunted by the relentless Enforcer and her minion. And thus we have our movie: characters in pursuit of an objective we neither comprehend nor care about, pursued by a vague and constant threat.
There’s a hint of Game of Thrones-like political intrigue to In the Lost Lands, notably in all the scenes of exposition between the Queen, the bedridden overlord (Jacek Dzisiewicz), and The Patriarch (Fraser James), a religious leader who challenges their power. There are factions of working-class cultists and masked guardsman gearing up for war in the only inhabited city in this futuristic hellscape. But our lead characters rarely interact with, and never care about, anything going on in the rest of the movie.
If you’re expecting a neat story twist to wrap up the genie conundrum at the heart of the movie, because this is based on a story by George R.R. Martin… you may be left wanting by a conclusion that seems to invalidate the film that has preceded it. But underneath it all, there’s a level of craftsmanship in Constantin Werner‘s script beyond what Anderson usually has to work with.
There’s also one standout action set piece, involving a rusted husk of a bus refashioned into a cable car, which Alys and Boyce must ride between skyscrapers while fighting off cultists. It’s a legitimately well-crafted sequence that hints at some genuine skill beyond the filmmaking on display.
In an interesting coincidence, In the Lost Lands is opening in cinemas worldwide as The Electric State premieres on Netflix. Both films are strikingly similar in their void of narrative weight, telling the stories of a pair of disparate characters across a post-apocalyptic wasteland for reasons that fail to resonate with the audience. But where The Electric State indulges in self-serious sentimentality, In the Lost Lands embraces the inherent silliness of its premise, resulting in a far more watchable film.
