Lost Boys: The Tribe

2008 *** 3/4

Check that out! The Lost Boys straight-to-your-living-room sequel was actually good! Not kidding.

The plot rides pretty close to the plot of the first one. Chris (an ex-pro surfer boy) and Nicole (his hot sister) move to Santa Carla, CA, which is just lousy with the vampires. Aside from their wacky Aunt Jillian who rents them their dumpy house, they have no family but each other. (The less said about AJ the better, but she's not in the movie too much.)

Both the siblings catch the eye of the bad vampboy of the week, Shane Powers. He was a rilly rilly good pro surfer who disappeared one day, and it turns out he lives in Santa Carla with his posse of befang-ed surf dudes. I must say they did a better job here of making a vampire's life look cool. In the first movie it was mostly about revving your motorcycles in the dark and going "woo hoo!" a lot. These surfer guys kill rich homeowners so they can throw huge parties in their houses, and then pull vampiric Jackass-style pranks on each other (ohhh, you were mackin' on that hottie and ba-bing! I stabbed your ass, dude! Your intestines are falling out! She's screaming! Total burn, yo!)

Chris and Nicole hit one of Shane's parties and both are tempted by undead romance, but it's Nicole who gets pulled in by the Head Vampire himself. Things get cheesy, they have a heart-to-heart, she drinks from his special flask, I notice that beneath the long blonde tresses and above the manly chin, Mr. Head Vamp has creepy-looking eyes. (Turns out the actor is Donald Sutherland's son Angus.)

Well Nicole doesn't see things my way and goes out on a motorcycle ride to the beach and we get to see this real-life scene off a poster from Spencer's.

But of course it isn't all best kisses ever, as Nicole pukes her guts out on the way home and wakes up half a vampire.

Chris enlists the help of Edgar Frog, who's played by an actor who was apparently of some note in the 80's. Feldman is clearly chewing as much scenery as he can (while he can), and his gruff speaking voice rivals that of Christian Bale's Batman, but his advice on vampire-hunting is pretty sound and he does have a few good lines.

I really liked lead girl Autumn Reeser. She's got a lot more on her imdb page than most of the other players, so I figure that's where this production spent their casting money, and it was a good choice. She's like a good blend of Jennifer Garner, Christine Taylor and Jennifer Love Hewitt, with the distinct advantage of not being Jennifer Love Hewitt. Best of all, she looks good with blood all over her.

Lost Boys: The Tribe is a fair mix of stupid and clever, leaning pretty soundly on the latter. The vampires attack with a vicious animalism, the action is good, the gore is there, most of the humor is at least okay, and the story really has no fat on it at all. And both Coreys!