All the Lost Ones opens with scenes of a party. Despite the jubilance displayed within the intimate setting, violent uncertainty lurks right outside the walls of the crew’s cabin. In short time we come to learn that the crew we’re partying with are a rag-tag group of misfits brought together simply trying to survive as a civil war is waged all around them.
The immediacy of the threat of such a calamitous dystopian not so distance future is apparently top of mind for many filmmakers. Not unlike 2024’s Civil War, the reasons for the fighting in All the Lost Ones is of minimal importance. Although, we do get more of a sense of the fighting factions core beliefs and reasons for fighting here.
The focus, however, remains on the crew, and their simplistic quest for survival. The film specifically follows Nia (Jasmin Matthews), who is revealed to be pregnant during the opening party scene. The thought of bringing new life into such a despair filled world adds a layer of anxiety to an already anxiety inducing predicament.
Matthews as Nia navigates the journey with understated grace as she finds herself in tribulation after tribulation. Among Nia’s crew of misfits are her boyfriend, Ethan (Douglas Smith) and sister, Penny (Vinessa Antoine). Nia, Ethan, Penny, and the rest of the squad find their humble survivors circle at risk when they’re found by a hostile militia group battling against the incumbent government.
Although Nia and company ostensibly pose no actual threat to the militia group, they are hunted down by the militant agitators. Environmental, racial, and gender politics all bubble just underneath the surface of all interactions involving the militia members. Director Mackenzie Donaldson is far from subtle in how she chooses to portray and moralize the militia members worldviews, making it that much easier to identify and sympathize with our main characters.
Unfortunately, the “lost ones” in the title comes to mean all of Nia’s chosen family of merry cabin party attendees. Throughout the course of the film, they all fall victim to the horrors of the civil war (either directly or indirectly). The cruelty of the world of All the Lost Ones exacerbates the Nia’s pregnancy dilemma – especially when her partner is taken out along the way.
Moments of intense dramatic tension are heightened by camera shots that linger on the faces of characters, rather than cutting to reveal the larger drama as it unfolds. An effective tool in communicating the personalized scope of the movie. Everything in All the Lost Ones is about the human experience. The dystopian civil war is simply a backdrop for Donaldson to explore it.
There are legs stuck in bear traps, knives to neck, and shootouts in abandoned towns. All the violence is indicative of the indifference the world can show to those within it. All the Lost Ones reminds us that despite that bleakness, we can find joy with our loved ones should we chose it, before it all comes crashing down on us.
All the Lost Ones had a limited theater release on the weekend of April 18, and became available on VOD on April 22.
