If Lost Boys: The Tribe (aka Lost Boys 2) had been called The Tribe: A Vampire Movie That Has Nothing To Do With "The Lost Boys" I might not have disliked it as much as I did (just to be clear, I disliked it quite a lot). It had virtually nothing in common with the seminal vampire movie it was purporting to be a sequel to. The story didn't relate. The tone was all wrong. Ergh... It might have been an OK movie in its own right but to use the Lost Boys name to sell it was an act of fraud.
Now we have a second Lost Boys direct-to-video sequel in the form of Lost Boys: The Thirst. This time around at least the film-makers have attempted to pay homage to the original classic (and it is a "classic" BTW, don't let no stinkin' Twilight fan tell you otherwise), but sadly it's all a bit half-baked and really only serves as another skid mark on the Lost Boys legacy.
The story, for what it's worth, revolves around some globe-trotting DJ, DJ X (Seb Castang), who is really a vampire infecting legions of ravers with "The Thirst" a thinly veiled party drug that's actually vampire blood. A woman, whose brother has been captured by DJ X to be sacrificed at his next rave, enlists the help of Edgar Frog (Corey Feldman) to take down DJ X when he arrives in some place that's not Santa Carla.
"This didn't seem quite so stupid when we were kids."
The logic holes here are boundless. If legions of ravers around the world are being turned into vampires how is it possible that no one seems to have noticed? And why would anyone want to do that anyway? If you're a vampire, wouldn't converting everyone else into vampires leave you with no shemps left to feed on. The story really makes no sense, and again, is out of step with the modest scope of the original Lost Boys film.
On the positive side of the ledger, the tone of the film is closer to the original than the previous sequel, with Feldman giving us a modestly humorous adult Edgar Frog as our principle reluctant hero. There are also plenty of references in the screen play to the original film. At one point Edgar even reels off just about everyone's name from original and explains to Alan Frog (Jamison Newlander), who is sadly underutilised as an even more relucant-er hero, why they are not in this movie. Yes, it's awfully clunky exposition but it was good to see these characters acknowledged, nonetheless.
Lost Boys: The Thirst really is pretty stupid, and not a patch on the original film, but it is an improvement of the previous sequel and there were just enough elements of homage to the original to make it all tolerable.
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