One of the biggest lies people have told themselves over the last few years is that Dave Batista is a good actor. The former WWE champion turned actor is often called the best pro wrestler turned actor in the history of Hollywood.

If you live in a world where Rowdy Roddy Piper doesn’t exist, you can make a statement like that, but the bigger problem here is that there has been this false narrative that Dave Batista has range as an actor, unlike people like The Rock or John Cena. 

As a result, Hollywood keeps giving him roles, thinking that they will expose the world to the hidden thespian that he is when in reality he’s constantly getting exposed for not being the leading man that they think he is.

To make matters worse, audiences have rejected any production tag team by Milla Jovovich and her husband Paul WS Anderson for 25 years. The couple has combined to make eight movies over the last 25 years, and out of those eight films, not a single one has received a positive review from critics or audiences alike. When you put a guy who can’t act under the direction of a guy who can’t direct and add in a star 20 years past her relevance point, you get the latest film from Vertical entitled In the Lost Lands.

In the Lost Lands is a film about an evil witch played by Milla Jovovich. Who finds herself at odds with an entity called The Church. The church wants to execute her for witchcraft, yet she uses her dark powers to escape. She is later approached by Queen Melange (Amara Okereke), who wishes to obtain the powers of a shapeshifter for her gain. The witch accepts her desire, as she cannot reject anyone, so she seeks out the use of a hunter named Boyce, played by Dave Batista, who has experience in the Lost Lands to help her find a werewolf that she can steal powers from.

Their journey will not be easy as the church is hunting them down, making their objective dangerous. 

In the opening sequence of the film, audiences are treated to a minute-long bumbling session from Dave Batista, who tries to explain to audiences the type of adventure that they are about to embark on. Some horrendous-looking CGI follows afterward as Milla Jovovich attempts to do her best acting behind a blue screen. It takes 5 minutes for audiences to realize they chose the wrong movie by giving the Lost Lands a chance.

This film might as well be another Resident Evil movie with Drax to Destroyer adding to the mix. For a fantasy movie, there’s no world-building associated with this movie. All you are told is that there were some great wars and 99% of the world got destroyed in the process. The good guys are the witches, and the bad guys are the church because Hollywood’s Infinity for The Narrative of Baal is anything but subtle.

There’s no character development in the film because we’re still working through the lie that Dave Batista is a good actor, so the film expects him to carry the narrative of the film as the de facto protagonist. The film is poorly written, as you are not given any narrative reason to care about anyone who is on screen, whether they’re the good guys or the bad guys.

 This is a movie that allegedly cost $55 million to produce, and you can tell exactly why because the entire film is a blue-screen disaster. Why would one spend 55 million dollars to create this film that had a marketing budget of $100,000 because no one knew about this movie’s existence even in the week of its release?

There isn’t a single redeeming factor about this movie; it is bad across the board. The acting is bad, the story is bad, the special effects are bad, the color palette is bad, the fantasy elements are bad, and the action elements are bad. And if you think this film is in any way shape or form an epic;  much like Dave Batista’s fanbase you must be a pro wrestling fan who loves Cinema but doesn’t watch movies.

There’s no sugarcoating this failure of a film; The Lost Lands solidifies itself as the worst movie of 2025 thus far. Whether it will be bad enough to remain on the top five worst films list by the end of the year has yet to be seen, but you will have to think that it’s a lock to remain in the top 10 unless we are in for one of the worst years that the industry has to offer.

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