Movie Review: Lost After Dark (2015)

The movie stars Sarah Fisher, Mark Wiebe, Jesse Camacho, Kendra Leigh Timmins and Robert Patrick.

Even though they had a somewhat late dinner, I was able to get the kids in bed early enough for my wife and I to watch a movie. And, as always, our genre of choice was horror. We had recorded this film off of one of our movie channels last week and, mostly because we didn't see anything that looked better, I ended up picking it.

Thanks mostly to the last couple horror movies we watched, I wasn't expecting that much from this film. In fact, when we started watching it, I wasn't sure if it was even going to be good enough to finish. As it turns out, however, it was actually pretty decent.

There were a couple things that really stood out for me when it came to this movie. The first is it wasn't as predictable as I thought it would be. Yes, it followed a plot that was similar to dozens of other films that are out there. But, unlike those films, the characters were killed in a much more random fashion. As a result of that, I never really knew who would be the next one to die, especially since the two characters I expected to at least make it to the end of the film were among the first to die.

I also liked how this movie never took itself too seriously. I wouldn't describe it as a horror movie spoof. But, the writers seemed to remember films like this are supposed to be fun to watch and managed to keep things somewhat lighthearted by mixing in some fun characters, such as the kids' military-obsessed vice principal (Patrick).

Another thing that impressed me was the killer, Junior Joad (Wiebe), mostly because of his no-nonsense approach. A lot of times, films like this will get a bit bogged down because the killer goes to unnecessary extremes to make his kills much more gory. That wasn't the case with this film. Junior used a variety of weapons, ranging from a pitchfork to a car. But, those weapons made sense in the given context, allowing him to be brutal without overthinking things. That, combined with the unpredictable plot, made things much more entertaining to watch.

I wasn't expecting too much when we watched this film. But, it was a surprisingly good slasher film and a movie I would recommend as a result.

My Grade: B