Lost Souls

This movie was one of the few that really scared me. It has many moments of actual horror. You can feel the horror surrounding you. It swallows you, almost. Maya Larkin (Winona Ryder) was once possessed by demons. She now helps priests in performing exorcisms. When she finds a name in a numerical code, she must hunt down and convince a skeptic that he is destined to become the anti-christ. This was a very creepy movie. I like the camera-work in it aswell. It makes it look like an older film. I especially like the ending. It was dark and gloomy. I thought it was great. This is a scary movie that people will look back on one day and see it as the year 2000's THE EXORCIST. Altough it got little time out in theaters, this is a movie that I feel will be something some day. LOST SOULS: 5/5.

Was this made for TV? Probably went striaght to rental. It's ok for a time filler, nothing much more. Couple of scenes may make you jump, or at least curl your lip. Not tooo slow going, just managed to keep my interest long enough until the anti-climatical ending. It's like reading a book only to find that the last page is missing, but then reaslise that it makes no difference...

In this horror effort, Winona Ryder (my has her career fallen) plays a young woman who once went through an exorcism (?) and now finds herself as the one person who can prevent Satan himself from occupying the body of a normally decent enough New Yorker (do decent New Yorkers exist??) Ryder does her best with the supernatural material and Ben Chaplin as the perplexed chosen one is decent. The story and direction (by first time director and award winning cinematographer Janusz Kaminski) rachet up the thrills and suspense and arent afraid to offer a downbeat ending. Sometimes gets obsessed with style over substance however. GRADE: B-

'Lost Souls' is an interesting misfire despite the fact that it is a good thriller. It starts as a really ambitious film dealing with the coming of the Antichrist, or at least the strong belief of Maya Larkin (the character played by Winona Ryder) that this coming is actually going to happen very soon.

The problem I have, however, is that we do not really get to know Maya Larkin very well throughout the movie. We watch her in her quest but we do not understand her well and we doubt her motivations. She is not believable as a person of faith with the necessary experience and background dealing with the 'evil' at hand.

The film starts well creating a dark foreboding atmosphere but stays at a level of a suspenseful thriller without any theological or philosophical implications. One would think that if so much is at stake then something more should be needed in order for us to root for her the way we did for Fathers Merrin and Karras in the 'Exorcist'.

Look, I'm a sucker for a good eschatological/apocalyptic thriller. Something totally fascinates me about that stuff. After the sheer stupidity of the illogical 'Stigmata' and especially the lame-brained 'End Of Days', I had a lot of hope for 'Lost Souls'. Sadly, it fails to deliver. Hollywood disappoints yet again!

Winona Ryder plays a troubled young woman who believes that Satan is planning on being reborn in human form, and kicking some Christian ass. Ben Chaplin plays a crime writer who Winona thinks is the Devil in waiting. Instead of just shooting him and doing the world a favour, she forms an uneasy relationship with him. What exactly she plans on doing is hard to say. That's the whole problem with this movie. The 'Se7en'-esque visuals are more important than a decent script. The characters motivations don't really make sense, and as soon as the plot looks like it's going to go is some kind of interesting direction, it doesn't. After a certain point you give up even caring what happens, surely a bad sign in a movie where the whole fate of mankind is at stake?!

Ryder used to be effective as alienated teens back in the late 80s in favourites like 'Beetlejuice' and 'Heathers', but lets face facts, movies like this and 'Girl, Interrupted' show how limited her range really is. She hasn't grown as an actress and is basically just not believable.

Ben Chaplin showed some flair for light comedy in 'The Truth About Cats And Dogs', and had a few outstanding moments in Terrence Malik's wildly uneven and overrated 'The Thin Red Line', but he fails to interest here. Ryder and Chaplin don't show any on screen chemistry or rapport, and this sinks the movie even further into terminal boredom.

The talented character actors in the supporting cast - John Hurt, Kevin Baker Hall, Elias Koteas, John Diehl - are all wasted by the dull and cliched script. Add to that one of the most anti-climactic endings in recent memory, and you've got yourself one lame "thriller" that is a real lost opportunity.

If movies about Satanism, demonic possession, Occult conspiracies and/or The-End-Of-The-World-As-We-Know-It are your scene, avoid this snoozefest and go straight to 'Rosemary's Baby' and 'The Exorcist', both stylish AND genuinely scary classics. After that try the hugely overlooked 80s supernatural Demi Moore flick 'The Seventh Sign', and the more recent Christopher Walken vehicle 'The Prophecy', or the fantastic Spanish comedy/horror 'The Day Of The Beast', both from the mid-90s. These movies all feature more intelligence, originality and suspense than 'Lost Souls' could ever dream of having.