Film Review: Lost Child Analyzes The Psychology of Fear And Folk Tales
SYNOPSIS: LOST CHILD, written/directed by Ramaa Mosley (THE BRASS TEAPOT) along with producer/writer Tim Macy, stars HUNGER GAMES and True Detective alum Leven Rambin and follows an army veteran, Fern, who returns home in order to look for her brother, only to discover an abandoned boy lurking in the woods behind her childhood home. After taking in the boy, she searches for clues to his identity, and discovers the local folklore about a malevolent, life-draining spirit that comes in the form of a child.
Every person has their traumas, and when you are poor or/ and uneducated such tragedies can feel frequent and without reason. Yet, if there is one thing humanity loves to find, it is blame; even if it has to look into legends or myths to find it. Ramaa Mosley’s Lost Child questions whether our built beliefs, especially folkloric, are just deflections and excuses to explain why life goes wrong.
Levin Rambin plays Fern, and is the heart of this film. She is going to go so far as an actress, and Lost Child is her platform to show the deep believability and emotionality she can give a character. Fern is broken. Between childhood issues and PTSD, she moves like a soldier through her inner pain. She is stern, strong, stubborn, and completely unknowledgeable as to how she can heal, and what she would even want from life after she did. For most of us, happiness is not exactly a simple, un-materialistic goal. We attribute it to dreams, and, usually, those are made of people, destinations, and things we wish to acquire. Yet, Fern has none of those; even her search for her brother is fraught by her own desire for numbness.
While Fern struggles to find herself, she also finds Cecil (Landon Edwards) abandoned in the woods. Though civil and kind, Fern does not know how to care for the boy because, frankly, she does not want to care for anything. Moreover, with no family or familial history, Cecil is a walking enigma. Landon plays him with a balance of reserved warmth and complete mysteriousness. Who is this kid? Was he abused? Is he an orphan? Is he a tatterdamelion? The latter suggestion is the most dangerous and increasingly believed option. According to legend, this is a demon that comes in the form of a child so as to attract a lonely innocent, i.e. Fern, and steal their health.
The craziness/ highlight of Lost Child, as a film, is that people genuinely believe this legend. You watch as paranoia begin to rise and set in Fern, whom is seen as the logical skeptic whom has witnessed enough darkness from humanity to know human nature can be more terrifying than the supernatural. My grandma always said, “Fear the living: not the dead. After all, its the living who will make you dead!” You can never beat grandma wisdom, but Lost Child is about how you lose enlightenment and intellect when all you have is your pain and stress. Written by Ramaa Mosley, as well, this thriller uses pacing and clear shots of nature and its protagonist to build a mystical suspense. Yet, it is the inner turmoils of its characters that captivates.
In truth, the “thriller” aspect of Lost Child falls to the wayside compared the psychological. Mosley uses the film as an analysis of how you can become a terror not just in fearing that you will be terrorized, but never accepting and moving on from how much you have been already. By the end of the film, you find out whether Cecil is a lost child or tatterdamelion. Yet, the true story of this movie is how lost children become lost adults that are vulnerable to mental fears in not healing their heart’s wounds. Lost Child Comes Out In theaters On September 14.
