Lost Souls

winona ryder rarely fails to take you to the exact place where your fear (of childhood in other movies and religion in this) is born and leaves you there, standing on the edge of a cliff wondering if you'll end up jumping or not and you sort of dangle there till the end of the movie (yet if you own a sensible mind, the images will haunt you in your sleep). the movie itself is not that scary in my eye, but it does give you enough insight to let your own doubts and questions lead you to where your true fear may lie and this is the real appeal of the movie, so yeah, i recommend it.

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...

This movie, beautifully shot and paced with great discipline, has one of the great twist endings in all of horror/suspense cinema. It seems that perhaps the director relied too heavily upon the intelligence and observational powers of his audience; the unbelievable twist at the very last few seconds of the film went unnoticed by most of them. ** POSSIBLE SPOILERS? ** When I watched this movie for the first time I sat stunned as the credits rolled. The unexpectedness of the ending took my breath away. I feel sorry for those linearly minded viewers who missed out on the experience. Try watching it again without getting so invested in your beliefs about which characters are evil and which are good. Keep an open mind about the nature of deception and that the Devil is supposed to be the Father of Lies. Pay closer attention to the criteria that are given, in moments of exposition throughout the film, for the Devil's return. What characters might fulfill those criteria?

Janusz Kaminski is better known as Steven Spielberg's cinematographer in films like Schindler's List. In this film which aired late last night, this story is about Ben Chaplin, a psychologist Peter Kelson, and Winona Ryder, a French Catholic School teacher named Mia Larkin. Mia arrives and asks him about true evil. Slowly, the film does unravel to explain why she meets with him in the first place. I don't want to ruin the story but Peter Kelson's life is about to take a turn for the worse. Unexplainable things begin to happen to him and slowly a truth about his parentage comes up. There are lot of questions that are left unanswered. Maybe it's because it was edited for television. I would have liked to have seen more in the final scene in the church before the end of the film. I think the lack of explanation doesn't help the movie and the ending is rushed to finish the story.

This movie is fantastic, well portrayed (although obviously somewhat rushed), and has great music. The plot and ending are often misunderstood, leading to bad reviews. However, this movie is truly a landmark in filmmaking and psychological thrills.

'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'.

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-