In the Lost Lands

Adapted from a very short George RR Martin story, director Paul WS Anderson's In the Lost Lands is a slight piece concerning comeuppance that find itself distended and swollen thanks to the action-packed demands of the medium it is being transposed into. Milla Jovovich's wasteland witch Gray Alys, of course, knows far more than she lets on about the expected outcomes of the magical rites this fallen future's royalty have her perform, but her wry perspective is never allowed to feed back into the finished film. Anderson and his co-screenwriter Constantin Werner jealously guard any debriefs, saving them all up for a conclusion that twists in ways that would be pleasant enough following forty-five minutes of television but end up being too little too late when playing at feature length. Very much a digital backlot film, In the Lost Lands is often handsome but desperately static. Establishing shots are packed with beatific, computer-generated rubble and straining light sources that recall similar apocalypses from video games, Zack Snyder pick-ups or even bubble-era anime but, whenever the film is in (slow) motion, Lost Lands very much fails to match the sublime notes of that latter, elasticated inspiration. Given that this is yet another Anderson and Jovovich team-up, it's hard not to let your mind wander when watching, wondering if the pair intend for this film to function as an unofficial cap on their Resident Evil entries, a series that has long since been handed off to other filmmakers. The evidence is flimsy - Jovovich plays another superhumanly capable woman named Alice who battles against awful men who have allowed greed to so completely sink into them that it has physically mutated their bodies - but it beats giving Lost Lands your full, undivided attention.