Lost Boy (2015) - Virginia Madsen as Laura Harris

Lost Boy is a 2015 TV Movie from Lifetime. On paper it’s something a little different to the norm. It is at least a different take on a theme we’ve seen before. This one actually wasn’t a rewatch for me, it was the first time I’d seen it even though I’d owned it for a while.

The tale revolves around the Harris family who are dealing with the loss of a son and brother eleven years ago when he was 6. They’ve moved on as best they can but that loss is a big part of all their lives still, as it would be.

Laura Harris (Virginia) is working as a Councillor to help other families who have experienced the same or similar tragic events in their lives. Laura and her husband Gregg (Mark Valley) have separated since the loss of their son, Mitchell (Matthew Fahey) but remain amicable and offer each other support. They have two children, their Daughter, Summer (Sosie Bacon) who is actually the twin of Mitchell, and a younger son who was born after the loss of Mitchell, Jonathan (Jacob Buster).
Mitchell was lost on a family day out at a lakeside, no body was ever found and so his whereabouts remain a mystery. The family refuse to believe he is dead and instead think him kidnapped. They remain optimistic that one day their son will return to them and still regularly put up posters with his image hoping that someone, somewhere, will have information.

At a dedication of a new park in the name of her son we see a mysterious stranger watching from the back and getting increasingly close to Jonathan who is recording the whole thing on his video camera and so oblivious to most other things around him. Jonathan manages to inadvertently move out of any danger he might have been in at the last moment. The mysterious stranger slinks off.

We see the mysterious stranger checking someone else out next, this time it’s Summer. He watches from a distance while she talks with a friend. He watches from a distance until she leaves when he then approaches her friend to get more information.

Before long he’s turning up at Laura’s office, Mitchell’s missing poster in hand. He hands it to Laura while he’s clearly feeling emotional. Laura summizes that this must be Mitchell and embraces him.From there the now 17 year old Mitchell is reunited with the rest of the family and it finally looks as though the Harris’s have their son / brother back.

… Or, DO THEY? – DUM DUM DUUUUURRRR.

Yup, that’s the rest of the film – Mitchell soon starts to act, suspiciously, and things escalate quickly as he adapts to being in a loving family environment.

Although the film could be a True Story, and was first screened on a channel known for True Stories, it isn’t, thankfully.

Lost Boy doesn’t play by the normal rule book, and I applaud it for that. Any mysteries that arise around the true identity of Mitchell are dealt with in a realistic approach. The viewers are given more information than the characters, but at the same time the answers Mitchell gives us for his actions are perfectly plausible and do explain some of his actions.Where the film falls down for me is towards the end. It seems to fall into tried and tested movie tropes, almost as though the filmmakers got a little scared of going with what they knew was right for the story and what they thought would be accepted by its audience. It doesn’t seem to commit just when it should.

And, it’s a shame. I wanted to like this movie more than I ultimately ended up doing. I was looking forward to watching, I made time to watch it and I didn’t make any notes (other than mental) or take any captures as I watched it all play out on screen.

It’s another in the “nearly good” pile for me.

It’s not a “new” film at this point, at the time of writing it’s nearly 10 years old. But I feel like not many will have seen this one so I’m going to put this bit in spoiler tags for now…

For me, they didn’t go far enough – The ambiguity at the end was great and I loved that they had the answers but didn’t want to know. It was kind of dark that way and made a pleasant change.

I feel like they could have done more to show how broken Mitchell was though. They touched on it with the scene with his Sister and her Boyfriend. They could have had him working more in the background to hurt the family with both his Mothers and Fathers respective new partners in a way that left the blame firmly away from Mitchell etc.

There was true potential with Mitchell here and I can’t help but feel it was wasted.

I understand that, for some, they kind of abandoned their son in that way – We see him at the end so we know he’s alive, but they don’t. He could easily have made the effort just as much as them, although he is technically a child still, with this experience he should have had the maturity that goes with his life experiences before the Harris’s.

The Harris’s don’t have an answer about what truly happened to their son now, but they don’t need them and decide to move on. And, I can’t say as I blame them. Their son or not their lives have been disrupted to the nth degree and they nearly lost another son because of it. There is only so much people can take and while they might always wonder “was / wasn’t he” their son, they have a duty to protect their other kids. Any further involvement with Mitchell for them would have put more wedges between them all.

And, frankly, they’d been through enough already.

Virginia is excellent in this film, from start to finish. It’s easy to believe her story arc from the Mother we see at the beginning to the one we see at the end. The whole cast is fantastic in this one to be fair, another reason I find the whole thing a bit of a shame.In an interview with the films Director, Tara Miele, on Cinephiled she has nothing but praise for Mrs Madsen;

“Virginia was so great. She had some pretty strong thoughts about the script in our first conversation and that thrilled me. If an actor comes on and doesn’t have a lot of thoughts about the script I get a little nervous because it usually means they don’t give a shit and they’re not thinking”

I can’t help but think what ideas were left out as I have about a million of them about how to make this film better.

I’d recommend a watch of this one if you can. It’s a good film in a lot of ways and looking at reviews online a lot of people are happy with it, some think the same as me and others just don’t like it for other reasons.

I guess, as always, you should make your own mind up about these things.

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Streaming wise you’ve got options, although you might need to enlist a VPN to do it.

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