My movie watch on 7 September 2024 was the 10-year-old straight-to-DVD sci fi/horror movie Lost Time (aka Body Snatchers), and I now understand why I was able to buy its DVD recently at a car boot sale for the princely sum of 10p…
Directed and co-written by Christian Sesma, produced by Spotlight Pictures, and released in 2014 by Ace Entertainment, Lost Time stars Luke Goss, an erstwhile late 1980s/early 1990s British teeny-bop pop star who performed with his twin brother Matt in the UK boy band Bros before reinventing himself a decade later as a successful actor in the USA (including major roles in the likes of Blade II, Hellboy II, Princess of Persia, and Tekken). Here, he plays an American cop named Carter, and the movie itself opens with his girlfriend, a young woman called Valerie Dreyfuss (Rochelle Vallese, who also co-wrote this movie's screenplay as well as its soundtrack's title track), suffering from terminal cancer, and whose sister Melissa (Jenni Blong) is devotedly caring for her.
But returning home from hospital one evening, their car suddenly cuts out, a blinding light encompasses them, and Valerie passes out. When she regains consciousness hours later, however, she is horrified to discover that Melissa has vanished. Nor is she all that has vanished – so too has Valerie's cancer. For, inexplicably, she is now totally cured.
So Valerie utilizes her new-found good health by devoting every waking moment of the next four months trying to find her sister, but when not awake she experiences hideous nightmares of alien entities operating upon her. Yes indeed, we're into alien abduction territory here, explaining the movie's title, which alludes to the frequently reported loss of time experienced by alleged abductees.
A mysterious author, Dr Xavier Reed (Robert Davi), who has written a book with that selfsame title and which deals with people's experiences that are similar to Valerie's, duly attracts her attention, and after meeting him she accepts an invitation to visit his sanctuary – a retreat where such people go to find answers. So she goes, but finds a lot more there than answers – namely, the terrifying realisation that her nightmares were not dreams, but were instead visions of what will happen to her there.
Reed and his staff are all aliens in assumed human form, and are hell-bent on harvesting human DNA in search of the so-called god gene with which to save their own species from impending extinction. Trapped inside the sanctuary, Valerie faces being experimented upon by them and her DNA stolen, not to mention having via an excruciatingly painful operation a centipede-like creature inserted into the base of her spinal cord to control her mind, but boyfriend Carter is hot on her trail after she goes missing.
Will he save her, will they find her sister, will any semblance of a coherent, cohesive plot emerge, will the constant soundtrack oscillations from much-too-quiet dialogue to far-too-loud music and ear-splitting, blood-curdling shrieks at all-too-frequent intervals ever stop, and will the cameramen locate some colour film and lighting equipment after shooting most of the movie in virtual b/w and in the dark?
Luke does his best to hold together and bring some much-needed level-headedness to this rambling, shambling, flight-of-fancy folderol. But when every time that some crucial plot-explanatory dialogue is spoken it is simultaneously drowned out by a cacophonous sound effect or some equally noisy blasts of 'music' (I use that term very loosely here!), you just know that he is doomed to failure.
Worth noting, incidentally, is that the movie tantalizingly ends with a startling twist occurring in its final moments (even more startling, in fact, than the veritable angel entity who makes a highly unexpected, unheralded appearance a short time earlier in finest deus ex machina mode), intimating that a possible sequel might have been under consideration at that time, but nothing has emerged to date.
That may be for the best, however, because at least as far as I'm concerned, the only Lost Time that I experienced here was the 90 minutes or so that elapsed while I was watching this flimsiest of flicks.
Nevertheless, if for some strange reason you'd actually like to watch an official trailer for Lost Time, please click here to view one on YouTube.
Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.
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