In the Lost Lands (2025)
Directed by: Paul W.S. Anderson
Premise: Set in a post-apocalyptic fantasy world, a witch (Milla Jovovich) is hired by the queen to bring her the power to shapeshift. The witch recruits a mercenary (Dave Bautista) to guide her through the wilderness.
What Works: The most impressive aspect of In the Lost Lands is its production design. The film looks great, frequently better than a lot of Hollywood studio produced spectacles. The world of In the Lost Lands is familiar from other movies such as the Mad Max series and Escape from New York but the world presented here has a lot of organic detail in the costumes and sets. The way this picture is shot gives it both an organic reality and a mythic quality. Milla Jovovich is an actress of narrow range but she has made a niche for herself as a sci-fi and fantasy action heroine which she has done in The Fifth Element and the Resident Evil films. In the Lost Lands caters to Jovovich’s strengths.
What Doesn’t: In the Lost Lands is a post-apocalyptic quest story and quite a bit of the movie feels generic. The movie reiterates the typical elements of these kinds of stories, assembling them in a boilerplate fashion. The hero’s quest plays out against a political power struggle between a monarchy and a quasi-religious group referred to as the Church. The movie lazily uses Christian symbols with no regard for what those images mean. The story is similarly uninspired. The plot does not feel like an organic series of events. One sequence does not lead logically to the next. It’s all a haphazard collection of disconnected moments. There’s nothing at stake in the quest; the outcome of the journey has no bearing on the political intrigue. In the Lost Lands simultaneously feels rushed and overlong. The narrative, which is based on a short story by George R.R. Martin, has a lot of characters and parties scheming against one another but none of the subplots get enough screentime to properly develop. Supporting characters and supernatural forces are introduced but almost as quickly dispatched from the story and neither of our heroes learn anything along the way. The filmmakers don’t know when to quit and In the Lost Lands ends on an overextended coda that undoes the story’s one moment of gravitas. In the Lost Lands intends to create some kind of complex relationship between the witch played by Milla Jovovich and the mercenary played by Dave Bautista. It’s unclear if this is supposed to be a romance or a partnership or something else. It doesn’t matter because there is no chemistry between Jovovich and Bautista.
Disc extras: None.
Bottom Line: In the Lost Lands plays like a feature-length trailer. It contains a lot of flash and fury but only the outline of a story. This might have been better as a television series.
Episode: #1059 (August 3, 2025)