User Reviews

An otherwise flimsy, and borderline incoherent narrative is buttressed by great visuals and devastatingly mournful narrations from the documentarian. This film's predecessor is the best drug film ever made, I say this as someone who was addicted to heroin for a decade, has a masters in counseling psychology with a focus on substance abuse, and a bachelors of arts in film. The first film's strongest strengths are its characters, the setting, and the raw authenticity of the drug use. Its sort of a lightning caught in a bottle scenario.

This film doesn't really have any interesting characters, theres actually more drug use and sex than in the original. The direct An otherwise flimsy, and borderline incoherent narrative is buttressed by great visuals and devastatingly mournful narrations from the documentarian. This film's predecessor is the best drug film ever made, I say this as someone who was addicted to heroin for a decade, has a masters in counseling psychology with a focus on substance abuse, and a bachelors of arts in film. The first film's strongest strengths are its characters, the setting, and the raw authenticity of the drug use. The first is sort of a lightning caught in a bottle scenario. This film lacks the humanity of the first one. There was an odd boisterous, almost bubbly element to Jani's personality. He was an optimist. The most heartbreaking part of that film is when Jani talks about his dream to just live on a farm with a wife and kids. This sequel has none of that.

Still I'd recommend it, its wild and surreal, and absolutely filthy.

Seriously this is one of the grimiest films I've ever seen, like almost troma quality but its all real.

I would have liked a more thorough dissection of what led Jani to hang himself.

Joonas Neuvonen and Sadri Cetinkaya continue the story of Jani, the petty criminal and drug addict, from their breakthrough documentary Reindeerapotting in a relentless and gribbing "sequal". The setting, tone, style and context have changed drastically and Lost Boys is much more professional in the way that it has been produced compared to the 2010 film. The film continues in format where handheld camera is used to portray the film from first person and a lot of scenes maintain the brutal realism of Reindeer spotting. This time though, the film has a stronger script as well as narration that make the story more subjective and structured. Stylistically, the film resembles Gaspar Noe's psychedelic nightmare "Enter the Void" from 2009 with its dark lighting, neon-light nightmares and depiction of decadence.

Although a lot of the imagery is related to drug use, sex and "unsocial behaviour", it is not a "drug film" in that it is not a film about drugs. Joonas brings himself out in the open as one of the "characters" of the film and ties it to his own life events. It is look into darker face of humanity, where ultimately the darkness is faced by the Joonas himself. As a documentary also tells a story and gives a voice to people who are not often heard in mainstream media or films, which gives it an interesting social element.

One of the best Finnish-made documentaries ever made, both in its gut rippingly brutal realism, but also in the depth of its story.

Man, what balls did the directors have to go back and question people.

Maybe they didn't know any better but they tipped their toes in a rigged game where they couldn't come out winning.

South East Asia in 2010 was a very crazy place to be. (it probably still is) You could quite easily spend your time doing touristy stuff but and maybe get ripped off at the market.

But vices were all very available and if you chose the "dark side", roots ran deep and it wasn't a good place to be for a foreigner.

South East Asia is a freaking paradise. The last thing you think of while over there is killing yourself but yet... Many tourists seem to go out that way and there's no explanation for it. It's probably less paperwork for the local authority.

Jani Raappana was clearly a character.

His charisma and reckless behavior resonates the stories about Neil Casidy or William S Burrough.

The appeal is hard to explain. It's probably because our lives can be so complicated and those people have chosen to live theirs in such a simple way.

"Press the pleasure button and crank everything to 11." Something most of us don't really have the balls to do but kinda wish we did.

27 is an interesting year to die. Hopefully it was long enough for him to enjoy it.

I don't know what the directors are up to these days but keep it up guys.

Make more films.

This and Reindeerspotting are 2 movies that expose the sad reality of so many human beings on this planet in a way that is hard to come by.

I had quite high expectations for this movie after having watched Reindeer Spotting and having read praising reviews. However, it turned out the movie was a complete waste of time and money.

Basically the movie was a compilation of a few old short clips of Jani and Antti taking drugs with a bunch of hookers and being high, short interviews with hookers and locals, and some absolutely terrible Max Payne/Sin City inspired wannabe gloomy hangover narration, that tried set a distressing atmosphere and sew the story line together, while being so made up and cliche that it made me burst with second-hand embarrassment. It was very disappointing to notice that the narration took majority of the movie time. The camera work and overall execution was so amateurish and annoying that having watched the movie for 5 minutes I wish the movie would not be like this for the whole time, but alas it was, and after 30 minutes I just wished it was over. I did watch it though though, as I rarely walk out of the theater, only to discover that the movie had very little content, lacked interesting story line whatsoever, and I really just wasted my time by watching it.

I had expected this movie to be about Jani, like Reindeer Spotting was, but in fact Jani's appearance was limited to about a total of 2 minutes of clips unrelated to the storyline. The sorry narration tried to build the disappearance of Jani into some kind of mystery that wouldn't let the viewer's mind to be at rest, but in that it failed miserably. Jani remained a distant character in the film and my attention started to wander from the intended storyline into pondering and feeling sorry for the tragic life of poor Asian girls, who have no opportunities in life and have to sell themselves, rather than the very expectable death of Jani. His fate remained unsolved in the movie but somehow it didn't bother me at all. There was no satisfaction in watching the movie to the end. It was filler material from start to finish.

To sum up, I strongly advice against watching this movie if you value your time. It's a sorry attempts to cash in with the fame of the first movie. If you are really interested in the movie, wait until it shows up on tv or streaming services, which I expect to happen very soon, where you don't have to feel bad for skipping the rest of the film after realizing how bad it is.