The Lost Tribe (2009)

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Where do you begin with this movie! The movie starts with an almost entirely unrelated and totally unexplained subplot. This subplot boils down to a group of scientist found the missing link in the Caribbean, not Africa or Asia where the earliest hominids have been found. That's not at all though! The church finds out that the missing link is found and sends in an assassin (Bishop from Alien). All of this has almost nothing to do with the movie though!The real plot begins and were introduced to five forgettable individuals. After some poor character development and attempted tension between the characters the creatures are introduced. Naturally, when the survivors' "leader" goes missing the four remaining survivors split-up because it ensures the highest chance of survival. Two people return to the beach or attempt to, but are chased and then are forgotten for the next 40 minutes. Meanwhile the two who continue searching are ambushed by Bishop. He kills some fat guy and then chases the main girl before being killed by a creature. With the creatures hot on her tail she discovers the creature have a weakness. Their infrared vision is blocked by grape juice! This is where the movie just falls apart. The main character infiltrates the creature village and searches for her boyfriend. The fate of her two friends is learned, shocker they're dead. Anyway she finds her boyfriend who has had his spine removed but is living and moving rather well for lacking a spinal cord. She smothers him to death with kisses and flees the village, creatures in hot pursuit. She has a final standoff with the creatures where we discover their bodies are the evil gorillas from Congo and their faces are from Predator, it was totally original though. She kills the alpha male and the creatures just walk off she happily leaves her Caribbean vacation and sails for home. One thing that annoyed me about this movie they make a point of pointing out the large cranial capacity of the creatures which split from modern humans when they developed. That was 200,000 years ago, sure it took us awhile but we mastered the planet in that time and flew into the stars. These creatures who are supposed to be the closest living relatives to humans haven't even developed clothing.

I did actually think The Lost Tribe would be sort of fun, due to its idea. But I didn't like the film very much. There are redeeming values and they were that it was beautifully shot, Emily Foxler is quite likable and although they're underused the creatures do have some menace to them. Otherwise, the story is unoriginal, all too similar to Predator and The Forgotten Ones, and is not helped by dull pacing and a ridiculous subplot involving a Catholic Priest. The script is unfocused and cheesy especially with Brianna Brown, with not enough mystery or character development, the characters I didn't care for at all either finding them stock or unnecessary. There are some scenes that were poorly done due to either bad acting or direction, I am especially talking about the scene on the beach which also had inconsistent continuity and the unintentionally funny scene in the cave. The climax was decent though, it just came too late to care. The acting is nothing to write home about, Foxler I liked, but Brianna Brown is wasted with some of the worst material of the movie and Lance Henrikssen tries hard but the unnecessary character and ridiculous subplot spoils things significantly. All in all, an unoriginal and dull movie, not an abomination but should have been much more. 3/10 Bethany Cox

First off, with the exception of a few goofs, this movie is actually made very well. Camera work is excellent, the settings are great, sound is original. And the acting is far better than the rest of the reviewers are giving credit for. There are movies with higher ratings with worse acting.That being said, now I can inform you that the script is total crap. They obviously had no money left for a script writer. It is a blatant rip-off of Predator (as well as some other films).-The creatures are tribal.-They use the trees to get around.-Shot of a python in a tree? Check!.-One character startles another with deep whispered "Over Here!"-When we are shown what creatures see, we hear heartbeats and the vision is a chroma warp black and white version of the Predator's vision.-Instead of mud, grape juice smeared on you will keep from being seen by the creatures.-The leader unmask himself for the final battle. (I was expecting her to say "You're one ugly mofo.")-In the climax of the battle, she gets picked up by the neck and they gleam each other eye to eye.This movie also steals ideas from "Lost" and "The Descent". The creatures faces were stolen from Brahm Stoker's Dracula (Francis Ford Coppola) and jump around like "Planet Of The Apes" .On top of all this, the subtle motive for the human antagonist is a plot by the Christian agenda to cover up evolution. This is completely unnecessary and would have only worked 20 years ago before evolution was a proved fact. When you make a science fiction movie that includes future events as the catalyst, it's probably best to do your homework and make sure those events are still science "fiction".

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.