It’s not like it hasn’t been done before. Take The Exorcist prequel. It ended up being two different films with the same leading man. That isn’t the case with The Forgotten Ones and The Lost Tribe. Apparently, The Forgotten Ones (also known as After Dusk They Come), was filmed, the production crew hated it, and so they hired a new director and shot a new rewritten film with a different cast. But what they pretty much ended up doing was, well, shooting the same film twice. Here are the differences.
THE FORGOTTEN ONES/AFTER DUSK THEY COME (2009)
In The Forgotten Ones, Kellan Lutz, a little stud named Justin Baldoni, a chubby guy, and two chicks board their boat to head to a party. Amazingly, Kellan doesn’t take his shirt off, but Justin does. Yowsah.
Meanwhile, chubby chasers will be thrilled to know that during a dance montage, the well-padded guy shakes his groove thing in a speedo to a hip hop track that samples Blondie’s “Rapture.” He also gives himself a thong wedgie. Fun.
Their boat gets stranded on a deserted island so they call a friend to come rescue them. While they wait, the main girl and her boyfriend fight a lot, they get engaged, and then finally, he gets dragged off in the night. The group argues because the chubby guy wants to take the emergency raft and go for help while the main girl wants to go look for her man. You’ll never guess what they decide to do.
This is pretty typical stuff, with the small group being stalked by half ape/half human tribal monsters. Nothing really chilling or terrifying here. To explain the existence of the creatures, a diary is discovered in a deserted excavation camp. And naturally, the main girl ends up alone, but the music score and her reactions don’t demonstrate that this everyday girl is completely alone on an island with a bunch of monsters and all her dead friends.
It gets worse when she realizes the creatures have stolen the raft right out of its storage bag (they actually left the storage bag on the beach). So she rubs some sort of plant slime on her that she discovers detracts the creatures and goes back into their caverns to get her raft. Why even bother discussing this movie anymore?
I will say that her being stuck in a tunnel of “horror movie pitch black” (meaning, you can totally see what’s going on) with those monsters surrounding her offers a few moments of tension, but it doesn’t last. And you’ll totally laugh at the “haunted attraction” feel of her walking through the cave as hissing snakes pop out at her and then retract back into the walls.
The Forgotten Ones is shiny, sleek, pretty, tidy horror that may very well give tweens a thrill. Maybe that is what the producers took issue with….
THE LOST TRIBE (2009)
I’ve seen this flick bashed online as a Predator rip-off, to which I say, “WRONG! It’s a The Forgotten Ones rip-off!”
The Lost Tribe is grittier and darker with very few tweaks to the script. Simply removing the polish and getting a more “rustic” cast is exactly what it needed. No thinly disguised teen horror flick here.
As for script differences, there’s an absurdly unnecessary and fleetingly revealed plot about the church wanting to stop an excavation on the island. So Lance Henriksen is shoehorned into the movie for two scenes. He kills the excavation crew at the beginning of the film and then appears for a second scene just so he can be killed by one of the creatures. But, hey. Now The Lost Tribe can brag that it had a sci-fi/horror icon in its cast while The Forgotten Ones only had that Twilight pretty boy. You can even do a DVD cover with Lance on front.
Again, two thin guys (without muscles this time), a chubby guy, and two chicks are on the boat, but they’re on their way to close some sort of music deal. Instead of fighting and proposing, the boyfriend gives the main girl a key to his place (the ring comes in much later on in the movie).
Then, they pick up some dude who’s adrift on the water. He’s hurt and acting insane, so they drug him (nurse on board this time) and never find out why he was floating in the middle of the ocean. That’s because he wakes in the middle of the night, steers the boat off course, causing it to crash on the island, and floats up on the shore dead. The group buries him but something drags the body out of the sand when they aren’t looking….
There’s also a dog running around the island, and the boyfriend doesn’t get dragged off; he goes exploring at night by himself…after they already know they’re not alone on the island. But this time, it isn’t the chubby guy who wants to leave and forget about him! Instead, he leads the charge in going into the jungle to search.
It’s pretty much the same movie as The Forgotten Ones after that, only more thrilling. The creatures look pretty much the same but they fricking talk in this creepy demonic language. They also come across as much more ominous when they are seen in quick glimpses running through the jungle.
However, I think what makes this film much tighter is the main girl. She’s so much tougher and believable as a woman who has the guts and ability to go directly into the cave of a bunch of freaky tribal creatures. And dang are they vicious this time, bringing on some pretty brutal slaughter and mutilation. And seeing them take flying leaps through the jungle as they chase the main girl is killer.
So yeah. The Lost Tribe is the film for the more hardcore horror fan. But I don’t think either film would be as enjoyable and fun to watch if you didn’t view them back-to-back to compare and contrast.
