It was a nice little vampire flick, but it wasn’t much of a sequel.  The only thing that strongly ties it to the first one is Edgar Frog (Corey Feldman).  If it wasn’t for Frog, The Lost Boys: The Tribe would have been its own separate movie.  It was a good attempt and a worthwhile effort, but Lost Boys caliber it isn’t.

The plot holds very few surprises.  Former surfer Chris Emerson (Tad Hilgenbrink) and his sister, Nicole Emerson (Autumn Reeser), move to the costal vampire infested town of Luna Bay, California, and end up bumping elbows with some patrons of the undead.  Even though there’s no new ground being broken here, the characters are fun to watch. Chris Emerson is somewhat unstable and overprotective of his younger starved-for-excitement sister.  As for the vampires, how often to you get to see undead surfers?  Not very often.  Other than the surfing element adding a little spice to the characters there’s no noticeable charisma from any of the vampires.  The most interesting vampire dies in the first five minutes of the film.  However, I must say that vampire is played by horror icon Tom Savini, and therefore holding a candle in the quake of that wind is pretty difficult.  The most interesting character is Edgar Frog who hunts vampires and shapes surf boards.

I was under the impression that Edgar Frog grew from the comic nerd that he was in the first movie to a professional hunter of the denizens of the dark.  I thought Feldmen was going to be “Edgar Frog: Butt-Kicker Extraordinaire.”  But Frog’s part came up lacking.  If you’re looking to see an uncanny display of bad-assery you won’t find it here.  Feldman is only in the movie every so often to help Chris Emerson combat his vampire problem.  As the viewer (particularly if you’ve seen the first movie) you spend the first part of the movie eagerly awaiting the arrival of the most interesting character only to be let down by an actor trying way too hard to be tough.  When we first get the chance to discover the new Frog, we see him trying to communicate through an unconvincing growl and half sneer.  I understand it’s intended to be comedic, spoofing traditional hunter stereotypes, but it’s more irritating than it is funny.  Had Feldman played Frog more organically as a comic nerd grown to be a vampire hunter, and minimized the tough guy act to a few initial lines as a means of quickly establishing dominance it would have been more satisfying.  The Frog character does soften as the movie progresses and thus the movie becomes for fun, but it’s to little too late.

It’s filled with funny situations and snappy one-liners that are easily quotable.  Humor and horror are successfully juggled to create a feel similar to its predecessor’s.  There’s a blend of dark humor and youthful pranks.  In a few scenes we get to see how far vampires can take a joke, such as slitting another vampire’s stomach to let his intestines spill out.  I think if most people were immortal this prank would gain popularity quickly.

The most interesting part of the film is the surprise cameo by Corey Haim during the credits appearing as Sam Emerson from the first Lost Boys film.  In my opinion, the second movie should have been about the events of Haim’s cameo, but maybe we’ll get a third movie to better show these events.

The Verdict:  It’s funny, it’s charming, it’s scary, and it’s worth a rent.  You might want to buy it for collecting purposes if you’re a fan of the first Lost Boys movie.  Watch it with some friends, and have a laugh.  It’s a pretty good time.

Spoiler Warning 

Teeth is an interesting, disturbing, and funny movie.  It’s dramatized, comedified and horrorsized into something best described as odd.  Unlike most movies that blend into the pack and settle into history’s background, Teeth stands out among the rest.  Good or not this movie has carved out a place in horror history. 

For obvious reasons the film is potentially more frightening for men rather than women due to the risk of intimate dis-member-ment.  As a horror movie it does its job.  Most scenes are at least skirting the perimeter of uncomfortable, if not diving right in.  Just from the movie trailer we can see that this is not a movie for the faint of heart.  It’s not a heart pounding scare-fest as we’ve come to expect from most modern horror, but it does establish a dread for the general situation. 

The story:  a girl named Dawn was born with teeth in her vagina.  It’s pretty straight forward.  She’s a member of a Christian teen abstinence program, who runs into trouble with some of the towns male citizens.  There are only two or three men in this movie who aren’t completely despicable.  So, when the teeth make their presence known there’s no sympathy for the dudes who lose their doodles.  I’m not opposed to rapists getting their comeuppance, but I would’ve liked a prettier picture painted of the less fair sex.  Men are stereotypically represented as sex crazed creatures that treat women like portable holes in the ground, and Teeth does not deviate from this depiction.  It gets old.  For the most part, if it weren’t for Dawn’s father there would have been no redeeming male characters.  That aside, there is a degree of pleasure seeing horrible people have horrible things done to them.  Strangely there is a general fear for Dawn despite the fact she can obviously take care of herself.  I think it’s more of a moral fear for her innocence as opposed to her physical well being. 

I was looking for a bigger message than “Don’t rape people.”  Maybe the point of the movie is that rape is more common than people like to think and therefore makes Dawn’s particular mutation a necessary evolution.  The thing I picked up on the most is that sexual assailants can come from any background, and often are people close to the victim.  It also points out the ultimate failure of abstinence promotion organizations.  So it has a bit of a liberal statement. 

As for the humor, it relies heavily on the viewer’s ability to wish harm on the bad guys.  There’s a lot of played up crying, and screaming.  This was expected, but still funny and unsettling.  Also, it’s a bit over the top, and it knows it.  It uses overly dramatized music, and plot to make this disturbing topic more palatable for the humor taste buds.  There’s even a scene in which a person yells the term “vagina dentata” (the fear of or presence of a toothed vagina) as if it were a reasonably common phrase.  Granted it makes sense when considering the person it’s coming from, but still it’s funny. 

The Verdict:  It’s definitely worth a rent, but you’ll probably only watch it once.