Lost Souls (2000)

Thanks for the memories!

SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

A group of Catholics go to a mental institution to perform exorcism in the murderer George Viznik (Brad Greenquist). Father Lareaux (John Hurt), Deacon John Townsend (Elias Koteas), Father Frank Page (Brian Reddy) and the teacher Maya Larkin (Winona Ryder), who was possessed and exorcised in the past, unsuccessfully try to exorcise the man and Father Lareaux is deeply affected and falls into a coma. Maya brings the Viznik's coded writings and after deciphering it, she concludes that the writer Peter Kelson (Ben Chaplin) might be the Antichrist to be incarnated by Satan. She seeks him out but the atheist Peter, who has been raised by his uncle Father James (Philip Baker Hall), does not believe in her. But when strange things happen to him, Peter meets Maya and they investigate together the chance to save his soul.The stylish "Lost Souls" is one of the most underrated horror films ever. The cinematography is top-notch; the excellent camera work explores unusual angle; the cast is magnificent; and the film has not aged after sixteen years. The story keeps the escalating tension in the psychological style of the classic "Rosemary's Baby", without the need of violence and gore. Unfortunately, Catholic values, such as the cross and holy water against vampires or the priest winning the evil in exorcisms, have been forgotten by an industry where this religion does not prevail. Why shall the evil always win in movies? My vote is eight.Title (Brazil): "Dominação" ("Domination")

How many of these crappy turn-of-the-millennia thrillers are there? From Y2K to the End of Days to even more obscure takes, there's just a slew of films that came out around 2000 built around the idea of humanity's time running out. Most of them stink out loud, but Lost Souls may be the worst of the bunch to come out of a major studio. This thing is overwrought, unclear, repetitious and has some of the worst pacing of any movie you'll ever see.To start with, you have to get about 30 minutes into the film before you get any solid idea of what and who it's about. I don't mean there's some mystery keeping the viewer in suspense. I mean you spend the first half hour staring blankly at the screen and wondering "Who are these people? Why are they doing that? Okay, why am I looking at this guy now? Is he a reporter or some kind of lawyer? Wait, he's a writer? Now why are we back with those other people? Is he the main character? Is she the main character? What the hell am I watching?"Then the middle part of Lost Souls tells you the same thing over and over and over again, getting more and more explicit each time but expecting you to be surprised every time it tells you the same thing. Imagine if Citizen Kane had constantly told the audience the secret of Rosebud, but kept going on as if it was still an unanswered question. That's what the middle of Lost Souls is like, except executed with 1/1000th the talent and skill.That brings us to the ending and a case of narrative whiplash. The first three-quarters of this film is languidly paced, dawdling along before suddenly going from 0 to stupid in 8.67 seconds. It's as if they started out with a 350 page script and shot the first 80 pages before it occurred to anyone that they were making a 6 hour long movie, then they tried to cram everything everything into just more 30 pages. It goes from feeling like a bad episode of Masterpiece Theatre to a worse episode of Pokemon.What is Lost Souls about? Well, there's this troubled young woman (Winona Ryder) trying to stop this guy (Ben Chaplin) from becoming the wussiest Antichrist in cinema history. The tagline for the movie poster should have been "The Omen…for Dummies." Some stuff happens but there's very little violence, no nudity, only a smattering of bad language and Ryder and Chaplin appear to be engaged in some sort of acting contest to see who can come up with the most different ways of looking forlorn.The only possible value this garbage could have is as more evidence that Winona Ryder is one of the most beautiful women of all time. It's gone amazingly unnoticed because she never became a Julia Roberts-type movie star or sought out constant media attention, but Ryder is truly incredible to look at. Actresses as a profession are more attractive than average, but even most actresses have a beauty peak. With some it's early, with others it's late, but there will generally be a time when an actresses' physical appearance is at its zenith and she doesn't look as good either before or after that period. Ryder's not like that. She hasn't had a beauty peak. She's been at a beauty plateau for over 20 years, starting out as a phenomenally cute young woman and maintaining that level of visual appeal all the way to the point where she's now getting to be almost old enough to play the mother of one of her earlier roles.Unfortunately, as great as Ryder looks, she's not enough on her own to make Lost Souls worth watching. You'd be better off acting out the book of Revelations with finger puppets.

If beautiful, haunting images made a film, this would be a classic. The color is both dark and somewhat bleached, and as s result, even the most mundane places look eerie and Gothic. There are some well-chosen locations and great camera angles. In short, this film looks great, ideal for the storyline. But the story itself never really takes off. Wynona Ryder, who's beautiful with long hair, plays the assistant to some priests who special in exorcisms, and she becomes convinced that a famed author, well-played by Ben Chaplin, has been chosen to be the anti-Christ. But the story never becomes as scary as it could have been. Not helping is that the screenwriters haven't done their homework on the subject. And the ending is dull, and so abrupt, it seems that the filmmakers pasted it on because they didn't know what to do with the story and were running low on film. There are a few scattered thrills and a few moments of suspense, but not enough of them.

"Lost Souls" is an eerie religious horror/thriller from first time director Janusz Kaminski, an Academy Award winning cinematographer. The movie follows Maya (Winona Ryder), a religious Catholic woman who is very spiritual and is a part of a small group of fellow religious people who perform exorcisms, investigate religious mythology, etc. But she becomes convinced that a famous writer, Peter (Ben Chaplin) has been pre-destined since birth to become a leader for Satan, after decoding the writings of an institutionalized man. When she approaches Peter about her findings, he is skeptical, as most would be. He's not religious and isn't a spiritual person by any means. But Maya and Peter both find themselves stuck in the middle of the bizarre happenings that have been predicted, and a final showdown ensues between the forces of good and evil.As far as religious-themed horror films go, this is a really good one. Religious horror films typically tend to get under my skin, it could be because I was raised Catholic, but they have always tended to scare me much more than say a slasher movie would. So, with "Lost Souls" being a film of this type, it did creep me out a little. The story has been done many times in various different ways ("The Omen" probably being most notable for this), but what I liked about this film was that it was crafted a little differently and wasn't quite what one would expect. The performances here were great, Winona Ryder and Ben Chaplin were both perfect and showed some significant talent. Philip Baker Hall and John Hurt have supporting roles as priests, and they were both also very good. To sum the performances up, the acting was all really wonderful and believable.The cinematography is what really soars in this film though - not surprisingly either, as the director is a cinematographer (who worked on both of Spielberg's "Schindler's List" and "Saving Private Ryan") and has won Academy Awards for his work. So naturally, the film looks stunning. Very flashy photography, dark and sometimes almost sepia-toned, and very moody and artistic all at the same time. I really liked the entire movie's 'look'. From what I've read on here it seems like the biggest problem people have with this film is the ending. I personally liked the ending. It was ambiguous. So what? It made you think a little and, while it was a inconclusive, it at least went out with a bang (literally). I've seen other films end in a similar fashion, but I think this film did it pretty well. It was daring and I liked that about it, and it didn't happen too fast.Bottom line - "Lost Souls" is a notch above most religious thrillers, and is very well acted with some amazing cinematography. While the ending may disappoint some, I thought it was at least fitting to the film and it changed the entire perspective of what had lead up to that point - it ended like that for a reason. Really not that bad. 7/10.