There’s something strangely moving about the filmography of Paul W.S. Anderson and his muse, wife Milla Jovovich. The couple have been making absolutely flabbergasting sci-fi and fantasy B movies for 23 years — of the 14 features Anderson has directed, Jovovich has starred in seven, including the “Resident Evil” franchise, and the pair show no signs of stopping. It fact, it seems the Anderson/Jovovich films will continue until morale improves.
Perhaps Anderson’s love language is making his wife act against a green screen, and it seems to be working, at least for their marriage, if not the cinematic results. Their latest effort is “In the Lost Lands,” a dystopian postapocalyptic fantasy Western based on a George R.R. Martin short story, with a screenplay by Anderson and Constantin Werner. The entire thing looks like a steampunk “300” with nods to George Miller’s “Mad Max” movies, but rendered almost entirely in gray scale. With pops of red, fiery accents and an overly stylized digital look, it also calls to mind Robert Rodriguez’s comic book adaptation “Sin City.”
It’s an eyesore, but it’s an eyesore like no other, which makes it distinctive, at least. Truly, there is no one who does vulgar auteurism like Anderson. The man is committed to his sci-fi/fantasy sometimes video game adaptation dreck — and his wife — and one can’t help but be moved by devotion like that.
Jovovich is joined in this one by Dave Bautista, who plays a swaggering gunslinger named Boyce, packing a two-headed rattlesnake in his holster. He’s the most prolific Casanova of this wretched place, bedding both the scheming young queen (Amara Okereke) and a shotgun-wielding tavern wench (Deirdre Mullins). Jovovich is the witch Gray Alys. The film opens with her escape from a public hanging using mind control, and she becomes a folk hero (“the witch who would not hang”) to the oppressed populace of the city.
Compelled to grant wishes, Gray Alys promises the queen she’ll venture into the Lost Lands outside the city to retrieve the power of shapeshifting wolf man (one could even say a werewolf). With only six days until the full moon, she enlists the help of the hunter Boyce to take her into the Lost Lands. In hot pursuit is the Enforcer (Arly Jover), a religious fanatic (you can tell by the big cross on her chest and the the crosses on the faces of all her underlings) dispatched by the Patriarch (Fraser James) to bring Gray Alys back to be tried for heresy.
Got all that? It’s really quite simple, just a chase movie across a barren postindustrial land filled with dangerous beasties and criminals in search of a magic power. Back in the city, the scheming and backstabbing and oppressing continues apace.
There’s a decidedly uncanny quality to “In the Lost Lands,” which exists entirely in a gray computer-generated void studded with the wreckage of civilization. Anderson alternates between extreme wide shots of the digitally rendered landscape and medium close-ups for his stars because it’s pretty much all he’s afforded against the rest of the set. For about 40 minutes, the whole thing feels like a simulacrum of another movie, or a movie trailer. You keep waiting for the thing to actually start until it’s already well underway.
But there is something kind of endearing about the straight-faced approach to this deeply stupid movie, an earnestness that’s hard to come by these days. Is it entertaining? Not really. But does it look good? No. Is the script decent? Not at all. And how about the acting? Nothing to write home about. But the visual effects must be good? Still no. Yet, you have to appreciate the commitment to the bit on the part of Anderson and Jovovich, still making these movies after all these years. She’s still putting on a mullet wig and some facial tattoos and doing some silly make-em-ups with her husband. If that’s not true love, I don’t know what is. And Bautista is a welcome screen presence at any time, despite the limitations of the material and goofiness required of him.
“In the Lost Lands” is likely not destined to be a cult classic but by the time Jovovich and Bautista are fighting a bunch of skeletons in an abandoned nuclear power plant, its boneheaded charm reaches the only apex it might find. The rest is a race to the finish of predictable twists, pixelated clashes and po-faced line readings. Is this a real movie? I’m not entirely certain, and I certainly can’t recommend watching it. But I am amused by the bizarre Anderson-Jovovich oeuvre and hope they keep cranking them out.
‘In the Lost Lands’
1.5 stars (out of 4)
MPA rating: R (for violence)
Running time: 1:41
How to watch: In theaters March 7
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