Review: THE TRIBE and THE THIRST

It’s always frustrating when someone takes a movie you really enjoyed and screws it up with a bad sequel. Cube 2: Hypercube is a great example. So are the third movies in the original X-Men and Spider-Man franchises.
 
The Lost Boys: The Tribe and The Thirst take that ineptitude to an entirely new level.
 
I remember my initial disgust when I saw The Tribe. Talk about bursting the bubble of anyone who’d enjoyed the quirky horror comedy original back in the ’80s. The only similarities between that first sequel and the original were Edgar Frog (a professional surfboard shaper—really?); an actor from the Sutherland family; the protagonists being implied members of the Emerson family; and the iconic song, “Cry Little Sister” (a crappy cover by the way).
 
What bugged me the most about The Tribe:
 

• Edgar Frog’s initial appearance comes with no good explanation; he just seems to know where the newest victims seem to be. Who just shows up in someone's home like that?
• His motivations seem forced; initially, he is dead set on killing the newly infected protagonist (so intensely that he must be forcibly restrained), but then he’s all about saving her by going after the head vampire.
• The writers took ridiculous liberties with the original line, “Some yell and scream, some go quietly; some explode, some implode; but all will try to take you with them,” using that as full license to come up with all sorts of vastly different ways for each of the vampires to die. Turning into stone and shattering? Really?
• That the protagonists also belong to Emerson family, implying some kind of blood relation to Michael and Sam from the original movie, is just overkill--especially when the antagonist is another Sutherland.
• Formulaic much?

Still, as far as The Tribe falls short, The Thirst crashes and burns. It doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be. Kinda wants to be Blade, but not quite. From Dusk Till Dawn … well, it’s got the slutty vamps down. A little bit of Fright Night and John Carpenter’s Vampires, but not really. The flashbacks indicate that it wants to hold some kind of connection to the original, but again … not so much. There’s none of the original charm, and the attempts at comedic relief are just sad. Most of the acting is the worst bit of horror in the film.
 
But worst of all:
 

• How did Edgar Frog become so infamous? Why is he suddenly so important to the vampires? Because he’s killed a couple of head vampires along the Northern California coast (with added successes just conveniently inserted by the writers)? From the scene showing how out of practice he is, it’s not all that convincing that he’s done all that much since killing off The Tribe. There aren’t bigger threats to the vampire community out there? Please … call Peter Vincent.
• How does anyone (beyond the person who immediately becomes the suspected end-of-movie-twist as soon as she goes on and on about them) know anything about the raves?
• Really, how does anyone know just about anything they know in this movie? Talk about writing in info only the audience should be privy to….
• With the amount of passion Edgar’s had about vampire killing in the previous films, why is it so hard to get him onboard with the biggest vampire-killing gig of his lifetime? Oh, that’s right—he needs to have a meaningful flashback from the original film in order to be convinced.
• As noted above, the “real head vampire” twist at the end was sadly predictable.

 
Really, the only meaningful moment in the movie is when Edgar goes to Sam’s grave—obviously an homage to the late Corey Haim (may he rest in peace).
 
So, all you writers out there: Stop ruining other writers’ visions, especially if those visions are cult classics—unless you really, really think you have what it takes to do justice to the stories, the coattails of which you’re willfully riding. Otherwise, people are going to take notice. They’re going to get a little peeved. They might just write nasty blog posts about it … even years after the fact.