Customer Reviews

Lost Colony

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Synopsis: The made for Sci-Fi network film `Lost Colony' stars Adrian Paul in the role of Ananias Dare, the first governor of the first English colony to settle in the New World. Accompanied by his wife Eleanor (Frida Show) the group consists of 117 men, women and children who take up residence on Roanoke Island, Virginia. Shortly after arriving on this island paradise the Dare family is also joined by the birth of a little daughter they appropriately name Virginia.

Their reason for taking up residence on the island is a strategic move to separate and protect themselves from the numerous Native Americans living on the mainland. Little do they know that the island is haunted by an evil group of Viking wraiths set to attack and brutally kill all who invade their profane domain.

Shortly before giving birth Eleanor finds herself plagued by visions of horrible, demonic looking creatures that demand possession of her unborn child. As these unearthly visitations escalate after the birth of her baby in unison with one grisly camp death after another, this company of brave pioneers soon realize that something out of the ordinary is stalking them. If they hope to survive they must discover the secret of these incorporal beings and find a way to stop them before it's too late?

Critique: The '07 release `Lost Colony' delivers some fairly spooky special effects for a made-for-television film and Adrian Paul and Frida Show are both enjoyable and believable. The ending also takes a rather unexpectedly dark turn at the end which may surprise the viewer. On the negative side the storyline unfolds rather slowly in the beginning and when the action finally quickens in the second half of the movie one gets the feeling of being rushed too quickly as important aspects of the storyline are ignored. For example, how in the world did the young English governor become fluid in the ancient Norse language?

THE FEW REVIEWS OF THIS MOVIE ALL SEEM TO BE HARD ON IT. ALL I CAN SAY IS THE EFFECTS ARE VERY GOOD. THE GHOSTS WILL GET THE HAIR ON YOUR ARM TO STAND UP. THE STORY IS A BIT THIN; TRUE. AND THE FINAL SOLUTION TO END THE PROBLEM THE COLONISTS ARE HAVING IS STUPID. (figuring the ghosts cant handle water). BUT AS CHEAPLY AS THIS MOVIE CAN BE HAD AND TO SEE ADRAIN PAUL AGAIN MAKES THIS WORTH THE $$$. IF YOU SAW " NEMESIS GAME " AND WERE DISGUSTED, THIS WILL GET YOU BACK IN ADRAIN PAULS CORNER AGAIN.

It's pretty clear when there is a sub-par movie with unrealistic aspirations. The scenes and sets aren't quite as grandiose; the actors aren't really polished with their delivery; the soundtrack is semi-uninspiring, and even the guy who does the voice on the preview isn't quite as deep or enticing. Well, when a straight-to-Sci-Fi movie with hopes of being a potpourri of LAST OF THE MOHICANS, The New World, and some sort of ghostly hocus-pocus CGI (like a poor man's version of the undead army in The Lord of the Rings - The Return of the King gets put together those same aspirations, the results are less than impressive.

Ananias Dare (Adrian Paul) and a colony of settlers on Roanoke Island set up residence looking for a previous colony. The settlers found the bones of one previous colonist, and were separate from the Croatans Indians by only the water.

Ananias and his wife Eleanor (Frida Show) have a baby named Virginia when Eleanor begins to have visions of poorly CGI'd ghosts. Soon thereafter, crops die, colonists begin disappearing in the forest, visions and psychosis seem to become rampant, and the chief of the Croatans warns of an evil presence on the island that killed the previous inhabitants.

With less than rapt attention I fought through the majority of Lost Colony. The poor accents in a time-piece movie where evidently a result of the actors being told removing the 'r' from words constituted an English accent. Additionally, actors nearly incapable of understanding the word range, much less accomplishing such range while "acting", were only negatively accentuated by the generic Croatan Indians who looked more Croatian than Native American. The end result is relatively boring and abortive. Like a sand castle made with dry sand during a wind-storm, this movie was a failure grenade just waiting to explode in the viewer's face.

The plot also left something to be desired. Whereas the primary hypothesis stipulates that the colonists were assimilated into local tribes, this movie posits that the colonists' fate was the result of malevolent Viking wraiths and living trees that devour trespassers. As for my own hypothesis, I suspect the earliest colonists had a sneak peak at this movie's premiere, and the end result was mass-suicide.

A truly great movie based on pure speculation. Id really recommend it to everyone. The cast was great.

this is for the "can you say wrong place review" at the time of this story, the land that is north carolina was called virginia by the english. There were no states or colonies, and virginia encompassed n.c. virginia, and all the way to the pacific ocean were proclaimed property of the crown.

The movie was different. I got it despite some bad reviews cause Adrian Paul (the Highlander) is in it. The story was interesting, script ok, special effects cool. Not award winning, but I'm glad I puchased it.

Wraiths of Roanoke (Matt Codd, 2007)

I have found something I had hoped I never would, but always half-expected it--another Sci-fi Channel Original Movie that's equally as bad as (if not, thankfully, worse than) The Bone Eater. Wraiths of Roanoke is the kind of horrendous mess that makes me wonder whether anyone involved with it, especially the people who put up the money to make this, had any thoughts towards creating an actual movie; this is a video game on film. Not a video game adaptation, mind you, where the screenwriters took a repetitive framework with (usually) a paper-thin plot and built it up into something resembling a movie; this si the repetitive, paper-thin version that someone should have started with in order to come up with a script. But they left it that way, and we have to take it for what it is--awful.

Based on the famous, and ever-popular, story of the disappearance of the Roanoke colony in the 1580s (no one knows exactly when they disappeared, as the governor's trip back to England took three years; they were there in 1587 and gone in 1590), Wraiths of Roanoke attempts a supernatural explanation for the disappearances. Not surprising, given that it's a Sci-Fi Channel Original Movie. According to the script, three witches haunt the island on which the colony stands, executed by Norse invaders hundreds of years before and not allowed to cross over into Valhalla. The local Indian tribes stay as far away form the forest on the island as possible; of course, the settlers build the Roanoke colony right next door. The governor (Kiss the Girls' Alex MacArthur) heads back to England for supplies,m which are running low, leaving his son-in-law Ananias (Highlander's Adrian Paul) to govern until his return. Ananias' wife, Eleanor (Contract Killers' Frida Show), is pregnant, and soon into the movie she gives birth to Virginia Dare. (Yep, historical personages abound in this movie; from what I've read on the topic, all these people actually existed. Except for the witches, naturally.) Meanwhile, the winter is coming, the nights are getting longer, and the witches are picking off the colonists one by one. Ananias and his best friend George (Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Rhett Giles) try everything they can think of to fend off the witches. The ending is about as predictable as one would expect.

Prevailing wisdom is that the settlers were actually massacred by a local Indian tribe (who may or may not have adopted Virginia Dare). A supernatural explanation, though, has always been popular in the public consciousness, and thousands of different stories have sprung up exploring various possibilities. The vast majority of them are superior to this one. The script is horrendous, the acting about equal to it. The special effects are sometimes cool, but there aren't nearly enough of them to carry the movie (and some of them are incredibly cheesy; the witches themselves look like the Death Knights from SSI's old Gold Box games, and are about as pixellated). Avoid like the plague. (half)

Rented this for a scary movie night, but it turned out to be a snooze fest. Bad acting, bad graphics, sketchy plot and gaps in the story which was far fetched and disappointing. I wouldn't recommend purchasing this movie.

The Lost Colony was "lost" on Roanoke Island, NC not VA. I suggest further research before making a film about a significant historical event. Roanoke Island is located off the coast of NC and is part of the Outer Banks. They have a world famous reenactment of the lost colony there every summer, hmm, I wonder why?