Hey folks, Harry here with a fairly angry, pissed off review about having to endure LOST SOULS... Now this film has had a problematic release history... originally it was supposed to come out a few weeks after THE SIXTH SENSE, THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT and STIR OF ECHOES... however this doesn't necessarily mean the film is bad... just that New Line didn't feel like sacrificing the film on the stone like what happened to STIR OF ECHOES, and so they pulled it and have been waiting for the right place and time to release it. The trailers have been interesting... maybe it can be fun. This reviewer didn't care for it, but... ya know... I know people that didn't like the above 3 films... We'll just have to wait and see...
Harry,
I just got back from a screening of the Winona Ryder film, Lost Souls. Some of the soundtrack sounded temporary and a few scenes may have been rough cuts, but it seemed like a finished product. I didn't know too much about it before I saw the film except for the fact that the studio has been holding it for about a year. Therefore, it is stupefying that the movie can still be this bad.
It starts out with Ryder and some of her cohorts, including Elias Koteas and John Hurt, going to a hospital to exorcise a mental patient. We get a brief flashback of Winona undergoing her own painful exorcism. This brief clip is about the only character development for Ryder. The exorcism turns sour and somehow Hurt, playing the priest doing the exorcism, is injured.
Ryder, however, manages to decode the messages that the patient had been writing. The name of Ben Chaplin's character, which I can't seem to remember, pops up. (Side note: the best acting in the movie may have been Ben Chaplin's perfect American accent. How come all the English actors can mimic an American accent and Kevin Costner can't finish Robin Hood without sounding like he grew up in Michigan?) Chaplin is a writer who specializes in books about the criminally insane. Ryder finds him and tries to convince him that he is going to become the devil. And guess what? He doesn't believe her! Gasp!
I would write more plot, but it doesn't seem worth it. The movie is supposed to be a thriller/horror flick and can not pull it off. The peaks and valleys of a great suspense movie aren't there at all. The movie is bad. The ending is worse.
HERE COMES THE SPOILER...
Of course there isn't much to spoil. I honestly believe the ending to be one of the worst I have ever seen. Forget that the too much of the movie was derivative of other Satan flicks (see: End of Days, Exorcist, Rosemary's Baby and The Devil's Advocate) but the end was simply horrible. Naturally, it becomes a race for Ryder and Chaplin to find a way to reverse his transformation into the Dark Prince. And as the clock strikes to signal the transformation, he becomes Satan. Or maybe not. We don't know. We think he might be Satan. And Winona shoots him. And he dies. Satan dies. Satan dies?! What ever happened to the days when you didn't mess with Mephistopholes? The last scene is Winona in jail. Some guy comes in and asks why she shot Chaplin and she says "I meant to kill him." Fade to black. That's it! BAD! Horrible. Lame. No suspense. Nothing. It is like they got to a point in the movie and got bored. "Why don't we just stop it here?" someone said.
Obviously this movie has had problems. I would be very surprised to see this film released in the near future. Of course, if they couldn't fix it in a year, chances of them ever fixing it are pretty slim. Did I mention that the ending sucked?
Word Savage
