The Lost Boys is the ideal approach to a pretty common trope in modern film and television: teen vampires. The film is purposefully campy and ridiculous at times, allowing the more emotional beats with the characters to land and for the world to be instantly memorable.
By contrast, the Twilight films never grasped that or attempted a similar trajectory, resulting in a drab and ultimately forgettable series of films. By leaning into a self-aware and sometimes ridiculous tone, The Lost Boys -- which has just received a new Ultra HD Blu-ray release from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment -- is entertaining and memorable in all the ways Twilight wasn't.
What the Twilight films ultimately suffer from is a dour and melodramatic tone that bristles harshly against the more ridiculous elements of the series. It's both a serious teenage romantic drama and a fantasy series where vampires have an ancient undead nobility -- and sometimes they just play baseball.
Because the film treated its characters so seriously, these absurd beats stood out like a sore thumb. There's a lack of fun in Twilight. As a result, the film series ultimately became a slog -- a critically-derided collection of movies whose only humor was unintentional and where character development was largely morose and brooding.
By contrast, The Lost Boys never tries to disguise what it is. The film is filled to the brim with bouncy energy, with even the murderous vampire group led by David Powers all strutting around, chewing the scenery even with little in the way of dialogue. There's a bright edge to the film, full of boardwalk lights and fire-lit sequences, adding color to the world around them.
It's fun -- with lively concerts on the beach and goofy riffs on traditional vampire lore, like holy water-filled water pistols. Even the film's more horrifying moments portray the vampires as cackling and hammy fighters. In fact, these colorful beats often precede the film's quieter beats -- like the brotherly rapport between Michael and Sam -- that make the characters endearing and likable.
Part of this difference is on the different themes of both films. In Lost Boys, the vampires are purely villainous and corrupting, while one of the underlying themes of Twilight is to highlight the shared humanity across different groups. However, the assorted figures from Twilight never reach anywhere near the likability of the more straight-forward characters of The Lost Boys, which embraces the kind of energy that a concept like teenage vampires should elicit in someone.
Its characters are defined by fashion so harshly that it's impossible to imagine the characters in any other year than 1987, giving them a defined place in the world. Twilight instead is filled with a largely forgettable mix of plain clothes and designs making them instantly forgettable -- a Gap catalog that blends together and disappears into the background.
The Lost Boys remains a cult classic to this day, whereas Twilight has shifted more into the realm of parody. Many performers from the Twilight franchise have quietly distanced themselves from the series, whereas The Lost Boys has generated multiple fan conventions to celebrate its 35th anniversary. Part of that love likely comes from the sheer fun of the original The Lost Boys. That over-the-top bombast is what helped define the film's place in pop culture and continues to make it so memorable that it can be referenced decades later.
It's openly childish in a way, befitting a film where the vampires are portrayed as largely being incapable of leaving behind their youths. The Lost Boys embraces the inherent campy immaturity of "vampire teenagers" as a concept, and in doing so stands out from many of its contemporaries, even decades later.
The Lost Boys is now available on Ultra HD Blu-ray