Movie Review: The Lost Tribe (2010)

Synopsis: A group of friends sailing to a business meeting encounter an injured and hysterical man in the water and rescue him. They ignore his warnings to turn back, causing him to sneak onto deck and try to steer it himself, resulting in a shipwreck that leaves them on a seemingly deserted island. However, they aren't alone. The island is inhabited by a tribe of "missing link" humanoids who begin hunting them down.

Who's in it? The movie stars Emily Baldoni, Nick Mennell, Marc Bacher, Brianna Brown and Maxine Bahns.

Review: My wife saw previews for The Lost Tribe on one of our movie channels a couple nights ago and recorded it. Since we decided not to go out for karaoke last night, I put it on for us to watch. As it turns out, it wasn't as good as it sounded.

I think my biggest problem with this film is the writers went with the wrong plot. The part about the friends landing on the island happened after what could have been a better story, with an archaeological team not only facing the tribe but also facing mercenaries hired by the Catholic Church to keep their discovery a secret. While I'm not completely sure it would be enough to make this movie good, it would at least have been more unique than the one they gave us.

I also feel like the movie kind of half-assed things with the tribe. As my wife pointed out, there were times when it felt like a rip-off of the movie Predator, especially since they could detect heat signatures (but only when it was convenient to the plot) and had extraordinary strength, camouflage and leaping ability (making me question how humans were the evolutionary upgrade).

Also, for a movie about a killer tribe, it was actually kind of dull. Part of that was it took a little too long for people to start dying and, once that did happen, then the deaths happened a little too quickly for a group of people who had a gun but never once had a chance to fire it. We were down to the final girl, Emily (Baldoni), with a very large chunk of the film still left.

And speaking of that final girl, I find it hard to believe she survived at all. Those tribe people were throwing her around, knocking her on the back of the head and doing enough to ensure she would, at minimum, have multiple broken bones. Yet, she barely had a scratch. So, unless the movie is going to tell us she is secretly some superhero (which it didn't), the fight scenes involving her were unrealistic to the point they were almost as comical as the very convenient and confusing way she survived at the end.

Final Opinion: As I said, had the film been more about the archaeology team that was secondary to the plot, it might have been a bit more watchable. However, even if that happened, I'm not sure it would be a movie I would have enjoyed simply because it proved to be extremely dull.

My Grade: F