Review by
Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Mackenzie Donaldson
Starring: Devon Sawa, Jasmine Mathews, Lochlyn Munro, Steven Ogg, Douglas
Smith
To me, writing in a country where guns are unavailable in high street
stores and not written into the constitution as an apparent human right,
the weirdest aspect of the attempted assassination (s?) of presidential
candidate Donald Trump on July 13th, 2024, is how quickly it was all
glossed over and forgotten. I mean, aside from the unusual way in which
the security detail reacted (surely you would scramble to cover the
target before hurriedly delivering him to safety?) and the immediate
response of the wounded mark (one would imagine you would keep your head
down and not, as Trump did, essentially make himself a bigger target by
waving a fist about: again, no expert), don't you also find it bizarre
how it was all so quickly shrugged off? A notorious ex-president was a
few cm away from being shot dead, sustaining visible head wounds, and it
was just another part of the circus. The jaded response is a signifier
of how violent intent and enaction is simply expected. This summer in
Britain, there were an estimated 29 anti-immigration demonstrations
which often descended into acts of aggression, with rioters setting
hotels on fire and throwing bricks at police, essentially using a
deliberately obfuscated crime as an excuse for civil disobedience. As
these thick racist criminals were slowly but surely rounded up and
sentenced, again one couldn't help but wonder how they ever thought that
they would get away with it...
I think it's to do with this sense of violent tribalism as societal
default: of desperately wanting to be a part of a group which is in
necessary and angry opposition to a different set of people. If you are
weak of mind and empty of heart, it must be galvanising. In
Mackenzie Donaldson (director) and Anthony Grant and
Cheryl Meyer's (writers) All the Lost Ones, we are situated in a civil war scenario, wherein government sanctions
regarding climate change have resulted in the beleaguered country (the
film was shot in Canada, but the application is universal) being
marauded by voluntary militia with chips on their shoulders and guns in
their hands. We pick up with resistance members, Penny (Vinessa Antoine), Nia (Jasmine Mathews) and Ethan (Douglas Smith), who
are young and full of fun: partying (to Pete Rock and CL Smooth's
T.R.O.Y.!) drinking from those silly red paper cups and smoking weed.
Except for Nia that is...as she is pregnant.
The stakes are raised. And further so when, following the discovery of a
body floating in the lake fringing their hideout (in a diegesis wherein
the absence of clean water is the emergency, liquid imagery is used
expressively throughout All the Lost Ones), along with the ever encroaching militia, Nia kills an attacker while
on a recce for supplies. The film is unambiguous in its representations:
the attackers, a boy and a father, both fit a "redneck" stereotype and
the attack is at once sexualised, ‘"You’re a pretty one" and then
racial, "we don’t touch dark meat" Dad redneck despises Nia and her
like, seemingly just because they care about the environment. And maybe
two or three years ago, you might have thought that such
characterisation was glib and hackneyed, but a glimpse at what people
say on social media and do in real life immediately disabuses such
comforting notions today.
The event leads to a skirmish which brings the militia to the group's
door, leading to more senseless death and the abscondment of the
diminished resistance. It's unclear whose "side" the rednecks from
earlier were on, and the supposed militia are a have-a-go-gang of "rag
tag wannabees": the implication is that ideology is irrelevant, and that
the people joining and enforcing the militia purely enjoy the
opportunity to exercise power, to finally be a somebody. Later, when we
meet a UC general (played by your favourite Devon Sawa), his gang
chants "God protects the UC"; as if sparsely invoking Christian
mythology justifies their murder and intimidation.
The collocation of post-apocalyptic imagery - empty stores, rats,
burning buildings - gives All the Lost Ones a
recognisable sensation of dread, and the woody mise-en-scene evokes
Children of Men, along with
another film this year
predicated upon a North American civil war where factions are engaged in
a civil war and innocents become victim to this civil war (the name
escapes me, I think it was called The Battle of Secession). The
performances of Atione and Mathews are affecting and poignant, which
gives All the Lost Ones a crucial emotional weight. Not so
long ago this type of film, with its ominous representation of big ideas
concerning the environment and authority, would have perhaps been
couched in communicative genre frameworks; a backdrop of zombies or
hyperbolic bad science outbreaks, say. In 2024 there seems no need, and
All the Lost Ones' narrative, which is built upon people doing the worst things they can
because they have suddenly been sanctioned to do so, convinces in its
doomy fealty to an increasingly hopeless cultural context.
All the Lost Ones is in Canadian
cinemas from November 8th. A UK/ROI release has yet to be announced.
