Lost Souls

This movie was beautiful but about as interesting as sitting on the toilet while clipping my toenails. In fact the only reason I didn't fall sound asleep is that I was particularly hopped up from the Penguin caffeinated mints I had been having all afternoon. The high point of the movie for me was when I farted three quarters of the way through and thus briefly amused myself. I managed to entertain myself for another couple of minutes by calculating the odds that someone might get naked. In the end I decided there was no chance which coincidently was a completely accurate guess.

What I'm trying so subtly to say here is that this movie is really boring. It had a pretty cool look to it as the film is so grainy I bet it could be used effectively as sandpaper. Most of the scenes are shot to produce a very high contrast, which when coupled with the graininess gives the movie a very gloomy feel. Even in scenes of broad daylight it still manages to feel dark. Scenes not shot that way are so murky that you wonder if somebody left a fog machine going in the next set.

However no amount of cool photography can make up for a story that completely fails to be interesting. It's about a group operating within a church that believes that Satan is going to appear soon. It's not of those things where he's going to erupt out of the ground and start stomping around. No he's going to take over the body of a certain person who was born of incest. Winona Ryder is part of this group of demon fighters and by going over the mad scribblings of the previous person they attempted to exorcize she gets the name of Satan's host in waiting.

She tracks him down and tries to convince of this. Unsurprisingly he doesn't buy it. So they go through all sorts of events to turn up little clues to the truth. Now this might have been interesting except that they forgot to put anything creepy or scary into it. Hell, it doesn't even build any tension. The only attempt the movie makes at being scary is a couple of moments where something happens really loudly to try and make you jump. That's the movie equivalent of jumping out and yelling "Boo!"

I just never cared about any of it, never mind bought into it. The story is uninvolving and there is no particular chemistry between any of the actors to draw the audience in. The only bit of praise I'm willing to give the story is that the ending was logical. Not necessarily very interesting mind you but at least it followed logicly from the story being told. Far too many movies these days cannot make that claim.

So to summarize, story boring, photography good. If you're the sort of person that really gets into the look of a movie and could care less about the plot, music, characters or acting then by all means go see it. If however any of those items is important to you than you might want to consider skipping it. I wish I had. Maybe if it hadn't been released around the same time that The Exorcist was re-released, it wouldn't have seemed so bad. But after seeing the ultimate possession movie, this one's flaws are all too apparent.

- John Shea