These Vampires Suck

I had never seen The Lost Boys until now.  It is certainly a movie that I had heard of, and I had always wanted to see it because I had heard from people that it shows vampires as scary and not sparkly.  Unfortunately, due to some glaring problems with characters and dialogue, I found the movie to be decent at best.

The Lost Boys is the story of a mother and her two sons who move to Santa Carla, and then find out that vampires live in the area.  The movie is well acted and well directed (which I will get to later).  However, a good chunk of the dialogue is confusing and downright awful.  For example, one moment Michael is eating maggots and worms, and then out of nowhere he is eating regular rice and noodles.  This is never elaborated on or explained properly.  Also, how does Michael inexplicably know David's name?  It is not as if David introduced himself to anybody....ever.  My biggest problem with The Lost Boys is the dialogue, specifically from the characters of Sam and Edgar and Alan Frog.
The dialogue is so cheesy and silly that you cannot even take the characters seriously.  The writers made a poor attempt at providing comic relief, and instead left me rolling my eyes.  For example, when Sam finds out that Michael is a vampire he says, "Wait until Mom finds out!".  Yeah, as if Mom is going to be able to do anything about it.  You cannot cure vampire, kid.  I also find it ironic that Sam is into superheroes, more specifically Batman, because Joel Schumacher would go on to direct (and later destroy) the Batman movie series.

Joel Schumacher is the director of The Lost Boys.  I am going to be the wildly unpopular film fan and say that I think Schumacher is a decent director.  There are some things he does very well, and there are some things he does horribly.  I love the way this movie is filmed.  All of the nighttime sequences are so dark, as they should be, but in a beautiful way.  Also, at the beginning of the movie, there are many shots that show the kind of town that the family is moving to which help us as the audience understand that this place may not be the best for them.  There is a bike chase early in the movie that is exciting to watch.  The action towards the end of the film is shot well, too.  It was thrilling to see all of the different ways in which the vampires are killed.

The Lost Boys portrays vampires the way they are meant to be.  What keeps this movie from being great is the writing.  The dialogue is so bad at times that I just wanted to puke.  Other than that, this movie is quite enjoyable.