Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

I’m telling you man, these horror filmmakers have got to do something about these horror movies they’re making. In particular the first act. A couple of days I peeped in on the movie ‘Kill Theory’ which basically started with us watching a bunch of attractive twenty somethings and a fat guy travel to some out of the way place and painfully interact with each other while we patiently waited for them to hurry up and start dying. Once they started dying I thought the movie got infinitely better, but dealing with the characters was a psychologically damaging to experience. We quickly followed that up with this movie ‘The Forgotten Ones’ which features a group of attractive twenty somethings and a fat guy traveling to some out of the way place and painfully interacting with each other while we patiently sat there and suffered waiting for them to hurry up and start dying. Again, once they finally get to dying things improve markedly but my GOD was waiting for them to die painful. I don’t know what you guys have to do, I don’t know how you cats are going to do it because I don’t know jack about making movies, but you gotta to do something to mix up these first acts of these movies of yours. Something, anything, I’m seriously on my knees begging you.

So our kids are on a boat ride to some tropical location and they include Liz (Jewel Staite) who has Final Girl written all over her, her charming unfaithful asshole of a boyfriend Peter (Justin Baldoni), the bitchy gold digging Lauren (Nikki Griffin), her wealthy and overweight boyfriend Ira (Marc Bacher) who looks like he’s going to be our ‘We All Gonna Die Guy’ in this movie and lastly there’s Jake (Kellen Lutz). Now we question why Jake is even along for the ride since this appears to be a boat ride for couples with Jake being passenger number five and thus makes him an odd number which also means he has no woman. Compounding our confusion is that the bitchy Lauren is Jake’s ex-girlfriend and has abandoned the man for the fat Ira which only serves to complicate things further in a rather unnecessary way. Usually when I watch a horror flick with the odd numbered dude hanging around it’s a minority, but here… I don’t know. I guess getting Jake a girlfriend wasn’t in the budget.

Anyway, boyfriend Peter apparently can’t guide a boat to save his life and the next thing you know our kids have beached on a deserted island. Normally this wouldn’t be an issue but we saw earlier where some missionaries back in 1923 were eaten by some creatures on this island and unless they’ve died off in the last 85 years trouble lies ahead. Sure enough, before you can say ‘three hour tour’, crazed beastly humanoid cannibals are leaping from trees snatching people off their feet and getting down with some fresh meat. Things are looking rather bleak for our kids who I’m thinking aren’t going to make it but things are looking especially dour for our girl Liz because apparently the leader of this crew of cannibals doesn’t seem to want to eat her. At least not in the classic sense of the word. Good luck with pleasing that dude Liz.

To be honest with you people, this movie is almost unreviewable. I don’t mean to say that ‘The Forgotten Ones’ is so bad that there are no words to describe it. If only that were the case. Nor is it so good that there isn’t anything praise worthy we can say that could do this mediocre masterpiece of modern cinema justice. The problem is that there is almost nothing in this movie to attack and equally so, there’s almost nothing to praise. It just kind of exists and you watch it just like that. The setup as we pointed out is a retread of a thousand other movies before it, the cast was more than adequate for what they were required to do in this movie, the action sequences when our kids started dying were okay and the resolution of to this dire situation was a little out there as far as resolutions go but it wasn’t something that was eye popping nor was it vomit inducing. It was just there.

I did say there was almost nothing to praise but only almost because I did like the way director Jorg Ihle filmed those dudes in the monster suits jumping from tree to tree because that looked real and I’m guessing those people in those suits have to be some kind of athletic to pull off that illusion, plus the monster suits did look pretty cool.

But that’s really about it. There’s nothing here to greatly recommend or to throw darts at and that is absolutely no fun for me. If you can’t get enough of young pretty white kids and a fat guy in peril without the benefit of cell phone reception then this movie ‘The Forgotten Ones’ should be number 100,854 in your collection. I got nuthin’ for you outside of that.