The Lost starts late one night as Ray Pye (Marc Senter) & his two best friends Timmy (Alex Frost) & Jennifer (Shay Astar) are out in the woods, Ray spots two girls who start kissing each other which offends Ray's moral sensibilities so he shoots them with a rifle killing one girl & leaving the other in a coma. Jump forward 'Four Years Later' & the crime remains unsolved, the girl has been in a coma for four years but has now died. Detective Charlie Schilling (Michael Bowden) has investigated the case for four years & his only suspect is Ray, Schilling is convinced Ray is responsible but cannot prove it. Ray is obsessed with his image & chats up every girl he meets, he has violent outbursts & is mentally unstable. Schilling tries to manipulate Timmy & Jennifer's fear of Ray in order to get a confession but when Ray finds out he loses control completely...

Written, produced & directed by Chris Silvertson based on the novel by Jack Ketchum this rather dull serial killer thriller is more of a character study & was a real chore for me to sit through, there is no horror or suspense & I thought it was pretty lifeless. The script focuses on Ray as a character, the problem with that is I though Ray was extremely unlikable. Ray is arrogant, treats people like dirt, he's a liar & cheat, he's a callous murderer, a druggie & selfish which is just about every annoying trait you can imagine which makes him as a character very unappealing & impossible to relate to. I was also quite surprised at how long The Lost goes on for, at a good two hours I felt like i had been sat there watching this for days as not that much actually happens. After the two girls are shot during the opening the script just follows Ray around, there's some subplots about an underage romance, the cop trying to prove Ray is responsible & a rich girl named Katherine who pops up occasionally & seemingly isn't bothered when her boyfriend Ray admits he brutally murdered two girls in cold blood. What all the good looking girls in this find so attractive about Ray is a complete mystery to me, a lying two timing rat like Ray turns on his bad boy charm & the girls just fall for it. Generally the script is quite bitty, it never seems to focus on one aspect of the story for too long & with such an unlikable central character I found the film hard to sit through.

Horror author Jack Ketchum drew his inspiration for the character of Ray Pye from the real life convicted serial killer Charles Schmid who was apparently nicknamed the 'Pied Piper of Tuscon' for reasons I don't have a clue about. The character of Ray Pye represents Schmid quite well apparently including his fake mole & copious use of lipstick & make-up. There is next to no violence or gore here, a few people get shot at the end & the two girls are shot at the start but with not much happening between them don't expect a high body-count or a blood bath. There's some sex & nudity thrown in if that's your thing.

Filmed on a low budget the film looks alright & has decent production values but with lots of dialogue heavy exposition The Lost didn't need to have a big budget. The acting is pretty good, I can't say I warmed to any of the character's but maybe that show's how good the performances are as I don't think your supposed to like anyone.

The Lost is a film that starts off quite well & promises to be a serial killer thriller but settles down into a boring character study full of melodramatic tedium that bored me silly. At two hours long not enough happened to maintain my interest & a really unlikable central character just killed the viewing experience dead for me.

The Lost starts like a fairy tale. Once upon a time there was a boy called Ray Pye. He put crushed beer cans in his boots to make himself look taller. We meet him with his two friends, Tim and Jennifer, in the campgrounds of a wood. Ray strolls towards a wooden toilet cubicle erected on the hill, the door opens, and a naked girl steps out, quickly apologising as she thought she and her friend were alone. The image is so startling that you know at once this will be no ordinary movie.

Ray has killed rabbits before and decides to kill the girl and her friend, to 'see what it feels like'. Tim and Jennifer, whom he dominates, are coerced into covering up. Four years later, Ray hasn't been caught, in spite of one cop who is determined to make him pay. Ray goes on to much nastier things.

If The Lost teeters on the edge of violence that is so extreme as to revolt most audiences, the question that will hover in the mind of many serious viewers will be whether the end is going to justify the content. Some will not stay that long - in the screening I went to, several people, after a section of intense and escalating violence, walked out at a point where a pregnant woman is stabbed in the back. You have to be able to stomach quite a lot, calmly to consider whether the film, in spite of this, has artistic merit. During the end credits, it says, "If you liked the movie, read the book. If you didn't like the movie, read the book." Ironically, many may not have stayed to this point.

While the film is not a masterpiece, I will argue that it does have considerable artistic merit, even if I feel slightly uncomfortable at disenchanted, gun-toting American teenagers watching it. It delivers both in style and in substance, and if censors want to intervene, that is maybe more a reflection on the people they think might be influenced by it than on its standing as new, invigorating and perfectly valid art-house cinema.

Firstly, the film gets a reaction. Not one of bored disgust - it provokes a gut-feeling, it makes the audience test and question its own tolerance levels. The acting is good all-round, but that of the lead character particularly memorable. His psychotic, drug-fuelled mannerisms stick in the brain like a traumatic encounter. The storyline and editing are stylish. Characters, almost in keeping with the once-upon-a-time introduction, have a two-dimensional quality, like those in fairy stories and we tend to see only traits that are essential to the plot. The characters' development does not go so far as being tongue in cheek or a caricature, but reaches an almost symbolic level where they become ciphers in a particularly challenging onslaught to the senses.

The cinematography and art direction is inventive. There will be switches to high grain film, or unnerving mixes of slow motion, missing frames and superimposed images. The bedrooms of Ray, and also Katherine, a lush that he falls in love with, use vivid reds and blacks to create a surreal effect, and props that include a statue of a black panther. Ray wears black eye make-up, throwing himself into a Bowie-esquire larger-than-life image to give himself an almost god-like appeal to the other, less dominant, teenagers. In contrast, when he finally comes clean about 'the worst thing he ever did', he is sitting dressed in black but on a pure white sofa and background. Katherine, who thinks at first she can 'handle' him, puffs languorously at a cigarette through red lips as Ray talks and she becomes sexually aroused.

Marc Senter's performance (as Ray) is like a turbine that drives the film ever faster forward. The potent soundtrack reflects a cocaine-frenzied adrenalin rush, and even the 'normal' characters offer only some queasy sense of relief. There is 60yr old Ed, for instance, who is in a relationship with teenager Sally; and Detective Charlie Schilling (Michael Bowen),who might seem crazy until you put him next to Ray. Unlike many films that try to capitalise on excessive violence, The Lost wins partly because it is not repetitive. There is nasty violence, quick violence, prolonged violence, mental torture with cruel and violent treatment, 'justified' violence and sick violence. Then there is even offhand violence - "I didn't like you anyway," says Ray as he aims and fires, killing someone with all the casual pride of a sharpshooter at a fairground. (In case you haven't guessed, there is quite a lot of violence!) Supporting scenes draw on popular subculture for realism, such as the rush to flush drugs (grass) down the toilet with limited success when the cops try to bust a party, or the 'friend' who tries to shave an unnoticeable amount of resin from Ray's cannabis delivery. Sensuous, opulent, and recognising few limits, The Lost strains at the sequins to be a cult nasty and succeeds. Even the sex scenes throw in a level of wit not found in the average shocker. "I'm sorry that was a little fast," says Ray after f*cking Katherine the first time. "I've had it faster," she retorts nonchalantly.

While featured songs such as "Drink, Fight, F*ck," might sum up the superficial ethos of the film, it rises well above the trailer-trash slasher that it could easily have become. More concise and elegant than Freeway, more intelligent and visceral than Natural Born Killers, demonstrating a considerable array of talent in its determination to shock that was so noticeably absent in The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael, less high-brow than Irreversible, and more hypnotic than American Psycho. The Lost, however repugnant many people will find it, lives up to its promise of being controversial and worthy of attention by all lovers of the genre.

THE LOST is one of the most disturbing real life movies I have ever seen, period. I thought Ketchum's "Girl Next Door" was about as disturbing as you can get, based on a true life crime, but this one is much worse and very graphic. Actually, Ketchum took two real crimes, the first about two women that get shot in a woods because some psycho thinks they are lesbian, and the other crime which occupies the rest of this movie. Ray Pye is a twenty-something psycho, that with his good looks and car and crap attracts a few followers and girls in this small town. He puts smashed beer cans in his boots to make him seem taller. The movie moves ahead four years, after the girls in the woods are killed, and Ray is having a ball, balling who ever he wants, and partying and drugs and the whole nine yards. But his egomaniac world is starting to come crashing down along with his sanity, when his girls start to turn against him, especially the beautiful Katherine (Robin Sydney). He pretty much goes berserk, and the last twenty minutes or so of this movie are very hard to watch, even for this old gorehound. It turns into almost a cross between Last House on the Left and the Manson murders. Ray even references the Manson murders when he takes his hostages into an unsuspecting couples cabin, with a young couple, the wife being pregnant. Even Jack Ketchum says in the commentary how difficult the last twenty minutes were for even him to watch. This is incredibly brutal material folks, and the director holds nothing, and I mean nothing back. Ray looks to me like a young Tom Cruise, or maybe a cross between a young Elvis and Tom Cruise, that seems to be the look he is going for. When he snaps, and I mean snaps, it's like the devil himself has taken him over. This is a hell of a movie, and it did make me flinch a little, and that to me is very impressive. Not for the easily offended for sure, but for everybody else, put "The Lost" on your Want List immediately!!!!!!!!!!!! I could not recommend this extremely disturbing movie any higher. Very very well made by the way.