Remove the pristine profile shots of Charlie Hunnam’s jawline and the darkened jungle B roll and you’ve lost 80% of this film. If only that was it’s only flaw. Sadly, themes and scenes do not connect. Called to the jungle, the men move forward as mapmakers, explorers, and discoverers attempting to make their marks on history as they walk deadly terrain, meet with danger, and never quite find what they are looking for. Sadly, neither do audience members as the story muddles on. 
The main character’s initial drive to regain family status too quickly translates to the goal of personal glory. Robert Pattinson, a bad casting decision, plays the mumbling, no talent co-explorer who helps lead a team of forgettable allies who lack enough purpose and/or enough backstory to validate rants or bouts with jungle-born illnesses. 
Even the addition of racial tensions in the early 1900s and a dash of feminist debate fall flat, and both come to no more than fluffy exposition and pointless conjecture for a plot leading nowhere. In the same way, Hunnam’s wanderlust prevails over practicalities and sends him over and over back into the jungle on fruitless endeavors to find a City that stays lost.
The heart was right. But the execution…abrupt and ill-conceived.
The actors, however, proved themselves professionals. Mary Elizabeth Winstead (best as Ramona Flowers in Scott Pilgrim) and John Gallagher Jr. (from the beloved short-lived HBO series Newsroom and the perfect indie Short Term 12) cared that their roles were believable and strong. John Goodman obviously enjoyed playing the crazy bunker-builder. They seemed eager participants in what felt like an experimental suck-up film, each shot an attempted homage to JJ or Spielberg. But even that would have been nice had this not felt more akin to Shayamalan’s more recent tragedies.
It all felt forced, and left too many unsolved mysteries about the characters themselves: like the unsolved main issue of Michelle’s backstory and serious relationship on the rocks. Any real details about her Emmett in the hatch, oh sorry the bomb shelter. Man, good thing they barely had to redecorate the Lost set after Desmond set the place up. Aren’t they supposed to be hitting a button every 108 minutes?
If you wait for breadcrumbs to lead you to truth in this one, you’ll go hungry. They mean nothing in the end. (Wait. Maybe this IS another Lost finale.)
I don’t know. Maybe people don’t go to the movies to think. Maybe I’m alone in blaming sloppy writing / directing. Sure JJ may have paid for it, but his MO is to support up-and-comers. He’s walking in the footsteps of his mentor Steven (Spielberg) and helping the fledgling directors take wing. Unfortunately, this Icharus not only flies too close to the sun, he flies into it inviting strangers from outerspace back with him to take over our planet. After this film, you’ll wonder which is worse: crazies on earth or crude angry aliens.
There are essentially three camps of audience members: the Front Section that watched faithfully week-to-week, the Tail Section that petered off somewhere around mid-season two, and the Darmahites who binge watched on Netflix or dvd deeming it a “cool show” some years later, making LOST a true cult classic.
Despite the stats, the inevitable questions were posed by all three groups:
The answers are rarely given and are usually simpler than we care to believe. The show was genius. It played on just the right emotions. It drew us in from moment one with great characters and writing. We believed that there was hope, so we kept watching. Hope is a seed planted which sprouts action and blossoms in destiny.
Splatter: on FILM 