The Movie Waffler First Look Review - ALL THE LOST ONES | The Movie Waffler

First Look Review - ALL THE LOST ONES

All the Lost Ones review
Three young people become fugitives during a civil war.

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...

All the Lost Ones review

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.

All the Lost Ones review

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.

All the Lost Ones review

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.



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