Metacritic reviews

The joy is all in its inspired, sensuous imagery, fantastical and dreamlike. The action scene as poetry, endless poetry in and for a hopeless world.

For sheer unadulterated geekiness, it’s got few contemporary equals.

The film provides Paul W.S. Anderson with a sturdy canvas for his unique brand of gaudy, campy cool.

Ultimately, the threadbare quality of Constantin Werner’s screenplay cannot be smoothed over with gobs of CGI effects (impressive as some of these sequences look) and the star power of Milla Jovovich and Dave Bautista.

It’s a grim slog through the wastelands of human civilization, which makes a big deal about the generic parts and glosses over all the thrilling weirdness.

Even the most ardent defender of Paul W.S. Anderson’s work might think In the Lost Lands is the kind of mess that proves the Resident Evil director’s detractors right. It’s not just a barely comprehensible failure on its own, but an adaptation that takes a character-based drama and turns it into an ugly action flick.

Unlike so many of Anderson’s efforts, In the Lost Lands isn’t adapted from a video game. But it sure as hell feels like one, and not one that would be fun to play.

This lackluster script struggles to build a captivating story to match the allure of its expansive desert setting.

The same video game aesthetic that facilitated his earlier B-movies has otherwise entombed this new one in a generic mess of C++.

The script may be the film's rotten foundation, but no one element can take all the blame for its emptiness.