The Lost by Chris Sivertson [2005]

Title: The Lost
Director: Chris Sivertson
Starring: Marc Senter, Shay Astar, Alex Frost
Runtime: ?
Year: 2002

This past weekend I was lucky enough to go catch two film adaptations of books by Jack Ketchum, horror writer extraordinaire. Seeing both The Lost and The Girl Next Door on the big screen, followed by a Q&A with Jack was quite a treat. Having read both the books, I was hoping the adaptations would hold up well. Good news is, they exceeded my expectations. Job well done, fellas. And thanks to Jovanka of Rue Morgue Magazine, I was able to tag along to dinner with Jack Ketchum and crew to hear more of what one of my favourite authors had on the brain. Amazing night, to say the least.

Ok, on to what is usually wrote around here. :)

Remember in high school the typical small man, big mouth guy? The one that always wanted to be seen as Mr. Big Shot but in reality was someone everyone else viewed as a joke? That would be the main character, Ray Pye [Senter]. Always in black with crushed beer cans in his boots to make him appear taller, Ray wants your attention, your respect, and he wants you to fear him. When really, he's just another annoying asshole you've seen a hundred times before.

During the opening scene, Ray is out camping with his friend Tim [Frost] and occasional girlfriend Jennifer [Astar] when they come across two girls. They spend the evening watching these girls at their campsite all night from behind bushes and all is well until Ray sees them share a friendy peck. He interprets this as though they must be 'lezzies' and therefore, why not kill them? Even just the mentioning of the idea puts the power in Ray's hands.

Ray shoots both girls from a distance with a stolen shotgun, one of the girls are able to outrun him and makes it to the highway and survives, barely. The other girl is not so lucky.

The movie then speeds ahead 4 years, when the surviving victim finally dies, as she's been in a coma since the shooting. The small town cops are all sorts of frustrated, the towns a wreck- but Ray just continues business as usual. With an on-going supply of drugs and alchol at his disposal, as well as a small town sort of rockstar status he's made for himself, life is good. He's either fucked, or will fuck, every girl in town- a fact he's quite pleased with.

Marc Senter plays the role of Ray perfectly, he brings across the image that you really couldn't give a rats ass about what happens to Ray. You don't care about him, just the surrounding characters. You know Ray is going to snap, you know it's coming- what toward who? And how? As Ray comes across various women in his town he soon refers to as 'his girls', you start to fear for them. Most of these girls are just the female version of Ray in the cocky, self-absorbed department, you can tell they don't know who they are dealing with.

When Ray finally snaps, the way it unfolds is perfection- and I don't care to give it away. He goes at his chosen victims with such a strong hate for life in general.

I loved the book and thankfully, the movie ruled too.

Recommended.


j

ps. Lucky McKee [director of May] seems to have his hands all over the film adaptation Jack Ketchum's Red. Sweet.