In the Lost Lands (2025)

With mankind reduced to living amidst a god-fearing zealousness in a city under a mountain where they are ruled by a decrepit overlord and his much younger queen (Amara Okereke), it would appear that their only hope of salvation from that salvation rests with the witch “Gray Alys” (Milla Jovovich). If she can make direct eye contact with you, then she can manipulate what you think and see. She has only narrowly escaped the “Enforcer” (Arly Jover) when she receives a couple of visitors who ask her for a favour. She cannot decline their request so long as they pay, and so must accept their challenge to obtain a shape-shifting wolf for them. The only place that this could be found is in the lawless “Lost Lands” and for that she needs the help of the legendary hunter “Boyce” (Dave Bautista). He hasn’t his troubles to seek either, but after a bit of mutual rescuing, they ally and set off on their quest. Of course, the “Enforcer” is in hot pursuit on an heavily armoured train and so with volcanoes, demons and her crusading troops on their tails it’s not easy task to stay alive in the first place let alone track and catch their quarry. By about half an hour in, we have plundered just about everything from “Indiana Jones” via “Lord of the Rings” (I’m sure I saw “Treebeard here”); “Underworld”, “Harry Potter and the” (take your pick) and, of course, “Mad Max” as this derivative dystopian story lumbers along in an entirely predictable fashion. There’s not the slightest hint of chemistry between the two stars at the top of the billing and what jeopardy there is comes straight from the CGI folks who do, admittedly, manage to create quite an imaginatively crafted world of dilapidated human civilisation to compensate for the writer’s rather mundanely crafted one of human collapse. It’s not remotely scary and the combat scenes are repetitive; the scheming and plotting with Okereke and her eye-candy henchboy “Jerais” (Simon Lööf) are lacklustre and the conclusion leaves virtually nothing to the imagination, even in the dark! It’s an easy way to kill some time in a cinema, but I doubt anyone will ever remember it afterwards - even if you were in the thing.