Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

Now this here Sci-Fi movie original looked like it just might have some promise. Check out this synopsis for starters: A group of post-apocalyptic survivors, struggle to survive in a world where jungles and forests and primeval wetlands and deserts have obliterated civilization. They staunchly face genetically mutating beasts and mysterious diseases in an attempt to re-establish the human race as masters of Earth. Now that sound pretty hot doesn’t it? Then we have Sean Bean headlining this movie and while having Sean Bean in your movie in no way guarantees that your movie is going to be any good, he’s still Sean Bean as he is a damn good actor. Then the movie starts looking very much like a TV movie, actually looking like ‘Pterodactyl’, but we’re cool with that because we don’t hate on TV movies over here. The tribe is hunting for some meat because as impetuous junior chieftain Savan (Corey Sevier) would inform us, they are sick of eating roots and berries, and damn if they don’t find the beast. It takes a

while but eventually we get to see this beast… A giant three toed sloth. That might not sound too scary but this was one vicious ass sloth my friends, and the CGI was looking pretty damn good. I’m thinking we might have a keeper here. I’d be wrong again.

Apparently back in the day humans were mucking around with stuff they shouldn’t have been messing with and ended up creating a deadly virus which turned the majority of the earth’s population into crazed flesh eating mutants and essentially ended society. We’re going to guess this to be about two hundred years ago and place the date at the year 2228. This is simply an estimated guess from the sketchy info given to us in this movie.

As far as we know the only humans left on the planet are this lone tribe governed by a group of elders and their questionable religious beliefs. Young Kaleb (Sam Claflin)

believes that there is a world beyond the woods, because his absentee father told him so, and he is going to find it and track down his dad. Also beyond the woods are the mindless, super athletic, flesh eating zombie mutants and they are about to make a visit. Our only question is what took them so long.

The tribe members who survived this attack are holed up in a cave while the beasts hack away to get to them while Kaleb, Savan and Savan’s woman Dorel (Annabelle Wallis), who Kaleb has strong desires for by the way, are on the outside dazed and confused. Kaleb strongly believes that there are people out there that can help them, Savan believes Kaleb is an idiot, Dorel is female and good looking. Regardless, this tribe needs help and they need it quick so our three heroes set out to find this help and this is where the meet the archer Amal (Bean) who informs our crew that A). Kaleb’s dad is dead, B). they’re infected with zombie juice because you only have to be close to one of them and not necessarily bitten to be infected, C). he’s immune to zombiosis because he inhaled something Kaleb’s dad invented called ‘yellow dust’ which can save everyone, D). the yellow dust has been stolen by the completely evil Gagan (Jonathan Pienaar) and E). They need to get to the evil Gagan’s lair so Kaleb, the only person on earth who can read, can retrieve his dad’s work, steal the yellow dust, save the tribe and make more yellow dust. That’s a lot to absorb in five minutes.

Our heroes have a litany of problems to deal with. Zombie mutants are everywhere. Amal the archer will be of little help in a few minutes. They are sick and quickly turning into zombie mutants. Gagan is crazy and evil and we know he’s evil because he’s walking around chomping on a huge turkey drumstick which something only evil people and Hagar the Horrible do. The zombies are just seconds away from getting to the survivors of the tribe and killing them all and there are only five minutes left in this movie. And that’s the biggest problem with ‘The Lost Future’.

Sure this movie doesn’t build upon its promising start featuring a nicely realized giant CGI sloth but CGI monster action cost money and that little effect probably busted the budget. We can understand that. Sure there were occasional gaps in logic such as why these mutant zombies didn’t kill this hapless tribe way earlier or how sloths can evolve into giant beast over the course of a couple hundred years, but we won’t ask those questions. But here we have a movie, after the big sloth fight, that is a little boring but would occasionally pick up some speed when our heroes were on their quest, only to have this speed completely interrupted by going back to the pathetic cave dwellers who are doing absolutely nothing but feeling sorry for themselves. Director Mikael Solamon kept cutting back to these losers, completely ruining what little action flow this movie was generating, to the point we were hoping the mutants would overcome their fear of standing water… it’s complicated… and kill them all. It was really irritating.

Now as far as the rushed conclusion is concerned, and I’m only guessing here, but I think this movie was originally intended to be a series or at least a mini-series, because there is so much going on and there are so many characters and so many strands of plot, that as I was watching this thing I was almost dead certain there is no way they’re going to be able to adequately end this movie by 11:00 P.M. Eastern Standard Time. The truth of the matter is they didn’t. with five minutes left our heroes are about to become zombie mutants, with thirty seconds left the zombie scourge attacking the village is eradicated, the bad guy is dead, zombiosis is cured, Kaleb is free to love Dorel and everybody can read. The only thing left on the table is Kaleb making more yellow dust. Seriously? What just happened? It’s like the clock was ticking so the producers took every ending scene they had, strung all them together and rolled the credits. Would I want to see four hours worth of this? Probably not… but I think I would’ve rather seen four hours worth of completed nonsense over a couple of days than ninety minutes worth of fractured whatever the hell that was.

There have been worse Sci-Fi Original movies , believe that, but this one actually had some promise. I hate to say this, I really do, but I think we need a director’s cut. A four hour Director’s Cut of a Sci-Fi Channel Original. There, I just said it.