As we near the end of the spooky season and a tremendous year for horror films, it is time to return to one of the classics: The Lost Boys (1987), a film with plenty of vampires, and even more comedy.
The film uses teenage brothers Michael and Sam’s run-in with the vampires as an analogy, producing a smart spring on the coming-of-age troupe of trying to fit in with the cool kids. A cult classic of its own right, The Lost Boys signifies a pivotal shift for the vampire genre in popular media, making them more youthful and enticing than ever before.
The script is not without its faults. The pacing, logic, and character development fall short in the second half of the movie, occasionally letting the visual spectacles overshadow the story. Yet, the script’s perfect humor, its exciting ensemble of characters, and the way it delivers its theme of belonging, are still things that we screenwriters continue to learn from.
Opening Image
The film establishes Santa Carla before everything else. The camera skims along the top of the ocean, moonlight on the surface, before “titles and title song.” Known for its banger soundtrack, The Lost Boys’ music is written into the script.
The Lost Boys, cool kids in distinctive dress, with the charismatic David as their leader, are at a carousel. They get into a fight there before being told off by the security guard.
Later, when the guard is walking alone towards his car, he gets pulled into the air with a scream. We do not see the vampires here. But the camera tracks the guard from the vampires’ POV.
Set Up
Lighter music turns us to a brighter mood. Lucy Emerson, just divorced, is driving with her two sons towards their new home in Santa Carla. Michael is in his late teens and a loner, while Sam is 11 and “a victim of too many afternoons in shopping malls watching Bratpack movies.” Coming with them is Sam’s dog Nanook.
They arrive at Lucy’s father’s house. Grandpa, a “rugged individualist,” plays dead lying on the stairs, giving Lucy and the kids a jump.
Moving into a new town is a classic way of setting up a search for belonging. This is only strengthened by both Michael’s and Sam’s disappointment towards their new home.
Grandpa’s house is odd. It has no TV (Grandpa tells them that reading the TV Guide is enough), they’re not allowed to touch Grandpa’s shelf of root beers and cookies, and, most of all, it is filled with creepy stuffed animals.
Inciting Incident
Lucy, Michael, and Sam visit the Santa Carla beach, where Michael spots Star, a heart-stopping beauty, along with her younger brother Laddie. Michael grabs Sam and follows them.
Meanwhile, Lucy becomes aware of a young boy separated from his mother and brings him into a nearby video store. She meets its owner Max, a tall, good-looking, and friendly man, as well as the Lost Boys, who are roaming in the store. Max recognizes that Lucy needs a job and offers her one at the video store.
Debate
Sam, tired of being “at the mercy of [Michael’s] sex glands,” departs him and goes into a second-hand comic book store, where he meets two teenagers, Edgar and Alan – the Frog Brothers. They give Sam a comic titled “Vampires Everywhere.”
Michael finally catches up with Star, but Sam shows up and tells him that they have to go home. It isn’t until the next day when Michael sees Star again.
The script repeatedly mentions Michael’s growing similarity to the Lost Boys, and this is the first time: him purchasing the kind of jacket that the Lost Boys would wear, trying to put on a “cool” persona.
David shows up with the rest of the Lost Boys. Star gets onto the back of David’s motorcycle. David contemplates Michael, before inviting him for a ride together.
Michael rides with the Lost Boys at top speed, trying to keep up with David’s bike. They reach the bluff, overlooking a 500-foot drop into the crashing surf below.
David stops at the last moment, while Michael nearly flies off the cliff. He punches David in anger, but David smiles, and invites Michale into the Lost Boys’ hideout: a Victorian hotel lobby inside a cave.
Break Into Two
In the cave, the Lost Boys trick Michael into thinking that the food he eats is maggots and worms, but which turns out to be simply rice and noodles. Finally, David offers Michael a bottle of wine. Star warns Michael that it’s blood but, now that he’s been tricked twice, Michael doesn’t believe her.
The Lost Boys invite Michael to the group, telling him that “You’re one of us” (again, the theme of belonging). They bring Michael to the top of a railway bridge, where they let go of the bridge and disappear into the fog below. They tempt Michael to do the same.
Finally, Michael drops, but instead of crashing, he floats, and inexplicably finds himself back in his bed.
Fun and Games
It is the next day, and the sun is bright in the sky. Michael is fast asleep. Sam wakes him up and he has to put on sunglasses immediately.
Lucy is on the phone. She asks Michael to take care of Sam tonight, because Max has asked her out on a date and she wants to go. Meanwhile, Grandpa has a date with Widow Johnson, and leaves the boys on their own. The Lost Boys’ motorbikes roar outside their house, but when Michael opens the door, there is no one there.
Sam goes into the bath, while Michael begins transforming as the night falls. As Michael goes up to the bathroom, Sam’s dog Nanook senses his dangerous scent, and attacks Michael when he opens the door, biting him in his hand. Sam realizes that Michael’s reflection in the mirror is nearly invisible and deduces, using the information he’s learned from the comic book, that Michael has become a vampire.
Midpoint
Sam calls the Frog Brothers, who confirm with him that Michael is a vampire because he can’t stand the light, has bad breath and long fingernails. They advise Sam to drive a sharp stake through Michael’s heart, but Sam wouldn’t hurt Michael.
Michael’s ability to fly is coming on. He is unable to control it as he flies above his bed, out of his window, and up to Sam’s. Sam calls Lucy and finds Michael floating outside his window at that exact moment. He screams and Lucy runs from her date with Max and goes straight home.
Sam, awakened by Michael crying “I’m your brother,” helps Michael into his window and back to the ground. Michael makes Sam promise not to tell Lucy, so when Lucy speeds home, all she finds are her perfectly normal sons and Sam saying that he got carried away reading a horror comic.
Bad To Worse
Michael finds Star at the hotel lobby/cave. Star cries and says that there’s something she can’t tell Michael and kisses him. They spend the night together.
Lucy takes Sam to bring an apology gift to Max. When they arrive at his house, they receive a vicious attack from Thorn, Max’s dog.
Sam meets up with the Frog Brothers. They go over the encounter with Thorn and confirm that, since vampires need guardians during the day while they sleep, Max must be a vampire as well.
Lucy invites Max over to the house for dinner. Sam invites the Frog Brothers as well. Michael walks out on them to join the Lost Boys, but not before he invites Max into the house.
Here, again, is a reminder that vampires symbolize the things that kids find “cool,” that they try to assimilate to in their teenage years. Even Max, who is an adult, drives a sports car that Michael finds pretty cool.
During dinner, Sam and the Frog Brothers do all they can to test whether Max is a vampire or not: they spill water on him, give him garlic, turn off the light to see if he shines… None of the tricks work. Instead, Max springs Sam’s actions into Sam’s rejection of him and Sam’s fear of Max replacing his father.
Break Into Three
Meanwhile, David brings Michael to a kill. The Lost Boys reveal their vampire forms, attack some partying teenagers, drinking their blood. They call Michael’s name, willing him to join them, but he resists.
Finally, David tells Michael who they are. What he talks about is dangerous, but he says it enticingly, drawing both Michael and the audience in. And he tells Michael – this is who you are as well.
Star shows up to Michael’s house, and Michael confronts her about how she let David turn him into a vampire. Star tells him that he’s not a full vampire yet. Like Laddie and her, he’s a half-vampire until he makes his first kill. He was supposed to be hers, but she couldn’t do it, because she was in love with him.
Sam calls the Frog Brothers over. After learning that Michael is still a half-vampire, they offer to save him instead. If they kill the head vampire, all the half-vampires will return to normal. Michael promises to take them to the Lost Boys’ cave.
This is the point when the writing begins to fall short. Michael’s fear of the Lost Boys and his desire to belong to them, a double-edged sword, is underexplored. We barely see him struggle or grow before he decides to kill everyone of the very group that he so desperately wanted to be a part of only yesterday. The information of half-vampires and head vampire are revealed too late. The pacing too, from this point forth, becomes rushed. We’re at page 70 of a 98-page script, with only a portion of act 3 left. Yet so much is yet to happen.
Michael, Sam, and the Frogs take Grandpa’s Chevy and arrive at the cave/hotel. While Michael, resisting the heat of the sun, carries Star and Laddie to the car, Sam and the Frog Brothers quest deeper inside the cave, where they discover the vampires sleeping, bat-like, hanging from the ceiling.
The Frogs stake one of the vampires through, waking and enraging the rest. The vampires attack, and they only just make it out of the cave. David tries to follow but nearly burns in the sun.
Michael, exhausted by the daylight, has fallen asleep. Sam takes the wheel to bring them home.
Sam seeks help from his mother, but Lucy, thinking that Sam just wants to ruin her date with Max again, does not believe anything he says about vampires. They’re on their own.
While Lucy and Max go on their third date in Max’s house, Michael, Sam, Star, and the Frogs prepare for the vampire attack that they know is coming.
The night falls. Before the attack, Sam remembers that Nanook is still outside the house and runs out to get him, returning to safety just in time.
The vampires break into the Emerson home. The Frogs confront one of them. They lure him into the bathtub filled with holy water, whose death causes bloody water to splatter from every sink and render the house’s ceilings and walls in scarlet.
Sam fights another Vampire, blinding him with holy water from a water gun, before Michael kills him with a longbow arrow.
David is here. Michael and him engage in a one-on-one fight in the air. Even in a moment like this, David is repeating “You’re one of us. Don’t you understand that? You’re one of us!” but this time, Michael knows where he belongs – with Sam, with his family.
Finally, Michael crashes David into one of Grandpa’s collection of antlers, driving it through his heart.
Finale
David is dead, yet Michael, Star, and Laddie do not feel any different.
Lucy and Max arrive at the house, stunned by the bloody scene. Max wears the expression of pure anguish – he calls the Lost Boys “his boys” and mourns their death. They realize they were right all along: David is not the head vampire, Max is! He only passed all their tests because Michael invited him into their house, which renders them powerless. (This last reveal with Max, as well as the fight that ensues, take place too quickly as well.)
Max reveals his big plan: he wants to bring Lucy into his vampire family, so he targets Michael and Sam first, hoping that, once her two boys are vampires, she would join him too.
Michael tries to fight Max and to protect his family, but he is no match for Max. To save her boys, Lucy lets Max take her hand.
Just when Max is about to bite Lucy and transform her, Grandpa returns, driving his car straight through the window, crashing the large fence posts through Max’s body, ending him.
Here, Grandpa offers us one last moment of humor: “The one thing about livin’ in Santa Carla I never could stomach... (beat) All the damn vampires.”
Off Lucy, Michael, and Sam’s stunned faces, we fade to credits.
