The Lost Tribe

This is not a very good movie. I watched it on the sci-fi channel so I wasn't expecting it to be Oscar winning material and it wasn't. The comparison to Predator is valid when it comes to the creatures and how they see the human targets (quite a bit of monster eye view scenes). The acting isn't great but then again, most of the time its just the victims running around, screaming. The plot is certainly weak but if you are looking at this movie and complaining about details such as how the radio still works after washing up on the beach, this is not your movie. Turn off the critical thinking.

The movie begins by laying down the premise. Woman archaeologist finds missing link. Church wants her dead and her findings covered up. She is killed and then assassins are killed by creatures. Main characters wonder in after all this and have nothing to do with the archaeologist and the church. The church wanting to cover up proof of evolution is not terribly hard to believe but sending a group of brutal assassins is certainly over the top but even that isn't a new concept as Tom Hanks has been battling Vatican assassins over the course of two movies now.

So after they crash on the island its a lot of running around and stupidity. There is an argument and a main character walks off (wanting to be alone for a bit) and we are completely shocked that he disappears. This sets off the rest to go searching for him and the hunt begins in earnest.

You don't see any of the 'lost tribe' until the last 10 minutes of the movie and I was pleasantly surprised to see them as they weren't terribly bad, I could even say they were rather well done. Hybrid creatures that show part human part ape. They look more ape like in the way they move but more upright standing and they obviously have a language they speak, ritual and hierarchy.

Acting is, by far, not the worst but far from the best, monster affects are better than your average low budget and are the best part of the movie but only shown in the last 10-15 minutes of the movie. Script and originality are the real weak points.

All in all it was better than I expected but I was expecting it to be so bad I would not finish it (like many sci-fi channel movies).

First of all, yes, THE LOST TRIBE does contain several similarities to earlier films such as PREDATOR and THE DESCENT. In fact, some could be called outright lifts. In addition, the idea of "the church" sending out a hit squad to cover up "proof of evolution" is absurd.

However, it somehow works in spite of these glaring flaws.

The characters are believable enough, with Anna (Emily Baldoni) being the unexpected standout. The creatures are better than expected, full of primal menace. While much of the movie is indeed derivative and the story line is rather inane, the final 30 minutes are worth the pain.

Lance Henriksen fans take note: His screen time amounts to about a minute and a half...

About 75% of the time, all you see is darkness and outlines, sometimes with some crunching noises and people screaming. That approach is OK for a horror movie when used in moderation: here it's used so much they might as well have been filming from inside a closet. With the door shut.

Except for the anthropologist (or whoever she was) character, the acting looks like a You-Tube video somebody at a drunken frat party shot of his friends when they were all beyond hammered. All of these characters are obviously there for no other purpose than to become roadkill pizza for the creatures. There's one recognizable actor in the cast, whose purpose is even more baffling; he's an extra bad guy but who knows what his motivations are. And it never matters or changes anything anyway. I guess the actor had some free time and worked on the cheap.

The movie brazenly cuts and pastes direct images from Predator and several other movies. The creatures (that you can hardly ever see) grunt Kling-On and chase the scientist blonde all over the place, and then let her go. Then chase her some more. She thinks they might be the long sought-after Missing Link, but who knows? They show more skill, intelligence, and adaptability than some modern humans, such as whoever was responsible for this silliness.

A group of young adults crashes their boat on some island, and they encounter a race of primates that is maybe the missing link or maybe something else. It's not really clear, but one thing is certain: they are deadly.

This movie is stupid for a number of reasons, the first being that they have no clue what they're talking about with Catholics -- the film features a King James version of the Bible (not a Catholic one) and says the motive is evolution denial. Believe it or not, the Catholic Church believes in evolution! This is also obviously a "Predator" ripoff based on the cover art, and the creatures' vision. The beasts in the film don't even really look like the cover, so it's a ripoff and misleading.

Where is this? 5 hours north of the Antilles... is that where evolution occurred? I don't know, but I doubt it, as that would be off the American coast.

Lance Henriksen appears, and tries to save the film... but fails.

While navigating with his girlfriend Alexis (Brianna Brown) and his partners and friends Chris (Hadley Fraser) and Tom (Nick Mennell) and his girlfriend Anna (Emily Foxler) to a close a Broadband Internet access business in Asia in the motor pleasure yacht of Joe (Marc Bacher), they rescue a wounded drowned man in shock. During the night, the stranger overrides the automatic pilot and steers the vessel to change the direction; however he accidentally wrecks on a rock and the vessel sinks. The castaways reach a beach in an island and they try to contact the coast-guard through the radio. However, during the night, the body of the stranger vanishes from the grave and then Tom also disappears. The group decides to seek-out Tom and sooner they find that the wild jungle has hostile inhabitants that hunt in pack and the survivors are the prey.

"The Lost Tribe" is a remake of the weak "The Forgotten Ones", with the same storyline, a better development of the castaways and a ridiculous sub-plot of a priest (Lance Henriksen) that seems to be inspired in "Rambo" that kills a group of researchers to avoid them to release information about the discovery of the missing link in human evolution. Despite having no religion, I hate this sort of disrespectful campaign against the Catholic Church promoted by some filmmakers in the cinema industry with obscure intentions. The plot is flawed and there is no development of the key character performed by the decadent Lance Henriksen. The beautiful and sexy Brianna Brown is totally wasted in a spendable character with laughable lines that wears only bikini and to tell the truth, I only liked the characters and performances of Emily Foxler and the creatures. If you have already seen "The Forgotten Ones", "The Lost Tribe" will give you the sensation of déjà vu. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "A Tribo II" ("The Tribe II")