Lost Boy - Gloomy 80s Cyberpunk Meets Hollywood Action In This Stunning Sci-fi Short

If atmospheric cyberpunk sci-fi is your thing (and it probably is, but you just don't know it yet), then stop what you're doing and have a watch of this short film, Lost Boy, by Dutch production company PostPanic. Directed by artist/designer Ash Thorp and Anthony Scott Burns, it's pretty much dialogue-free and the filmmakers say it's influenced by Hollywood action movies and Japanese samurai.

It's set in a gloomy, dark future where we see a cyborg stalking a woman in a world where humanity has sowed the seeds of its own demise, Terminator-style, by creating a race of machines that have near-annihilated them.

The film is called a "concept short" and as such is more of a mood setter, a kind of pitch, possibly for a longer feature length movie. But concept short or not, it's a masterpiece of mood-setting movie making.

If you head to the Lost Boy website there's a lot more background info and story on the project. Along with artwork and storyboards. Thorp has worked on graphics and illustrations for Marvel movies, and worked on the fictive user interfaces for the Prometheus movie. So he knows to craft an aesthetic for a movie.

This looks to be his branching out into filmmaking itself "showcasing the creative ambitions of Hollywood’s next generation of storytellers."

On his website Thorp explains how the idea came about:

Ash Thorp’s personal love and passion for art started in early childhood when he would dream of becoming a world renowned comic artist. As he grew older, his career shifted towards design and film, but he never lost his admiration for comics. So a couple years back, Ash decided to attempt to re-connect with his child like self again, just being able to sit and draw from my imagination for hours on end… and this is how Lost Boy began.

These images and characters were inspired by the summation of many things Ash enjoyed and grew up with as a child of the 80s. Once he started drawing, he became obsessed and created over 500 pieces of Lost Boy art.

Ash soon shared these images with Anthony Scott Burns, and they began to build a story together. They collaborated to build bold concepts and rule breaking ideas that helped evolve Lost Boy from a concept into an entire new world all its own.

Stay tuned for more from the world of Lost Boy.

Check out some of the artwork below.