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CORRIDOR
OF HORROR |
DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 1, NO. 15 |
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LOST SOULS and nearly becomes one |
Put out the lights...especially
the ones in the projection booth
By
JOHN STANLEY
of TheColumnists.com
"LOST SOULS" should have been called "Lost Movie." Its narrative is so muddled that the only surreal region the movie takes you to is Confusionville . . . and this just when the current re-release of "The Exorcist" is reminding the world how polished film-makers handle a film about the Devil taking human form to sow evil seeds, and how poor the imitators, having learned nothing from the masters, continue to crank out their rotten stuff decades later.
"Lost Souls" is not only lost but it's soulless, its characters possessing none of the depth or personality of similar characters in "The Exorcist." Compare Max Von Sydow's priest in William Friedkin's 1973 classic to John Hurt's limp and wimpy impersonation of a Catholic priest and you know you are in Hellsville.
Like that fella in the Richard Matheson short story who is attending a cocktail party, punctuated by inane conversation and insufferable guests. He suddenly realizes he's dead and gone to Hell, and this is how it's going to be for all eternity.
At least all you have to endure of this movie cocktail is 102 minutes, although that is far too long as it turns out even for as lenient a soul as myself.
This reportedly sat on a shelf in the New Line Cinema film vault for a year. Executive producer Michael De Luca should have known better, since he was running New Line back in the good old days of the "Nightmare on Elm Street" series when the ministudio/releasing company still knew how to make decent horror flicks without getting pretentious.
"Lost Souls," as pretentious as horror films get these soulless days, nevertheless arrives with some intriguing names to lure in customers: Winona Ryder is its star, excellent cinematographer Januzs Kaminski ("Saving Private Ryan") is its first-time director, and Meg Ryan (?!) is one of its producers. The latter name actually sent a shiver through my spine as I contemplated the whys and hows of her involvement. As it turned out, that was the only genuine shiver I was to receive from "Lost Souls." Thanks, Meg. Maybe you're better at this sort of thing than you ever thought.
But like the murky, almost muddy camerawork that is designed to create a downbeat world in which good will battle evil, the screenplay by executive producer Pierce Gardner is a hopeless attempt to blend a supernatural story with elements of the mystery thriller, populated by characters designed to be eccentric when they are simply unfathomable or totally baffling.
Someone please explain to me who and what Ryder's heroine is about. There is some vague reference to the fact she was once exorcised, and she now seems to be endowed with special knowledge about what the Devil is trying to do on Earth after breaking a numerical code that a convicted murderer has been scribbling on sheets of paper. She sets off on a one-woman crusade to save the world, but during her more manic depressive moments she has hallucinations of being stalked by a knife-wielding murderer, the same one who was scribbling code numbers down on the day she and John Hurt tried to exorcise him. Poor Winona . . . she even undergoes a nasty verbal attack from a little girl in a downtown cafe. The little girl turns out to be an illusion, although the greasy spoon cafe is quite real, and that's a horror to contemplate.
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Ryder behaves rather impetuously when she barges into the office of true-crime writer Ben Chaplin and tells him he's about to become a walking embodiment of Satan, in short, the biblically-prophesized Antichrist. This idea was much better envisioned in "The Omen" and its sequels, and it's amazing how uninteresting Chaplin remains throughout the film, even when he does turn into Satan on his 40th birthday. If you crave bad writing in movies, study "Lost Souls" because there's an example every time one of the characters opens his or her mouth.
I had a Devil of a time trying to figure out just what the Hell was doing on. I finally gave up trying and watched numbly as an inexplicable climax unfolded. And then the movie ended. And I couldn't have been happier to step outside into sunshine. My soul shined and I was no longer lost in a bad movie.
One good thing came out of seeing seeing "Lost Souls." At the beginning of the show the theater played a trailer for "Little Nicky," a soon-to-be-released Adam Sandler supernatural misadventure in which he portrays the son of Satan, sent to Earth by daddy strictly for comedic purposes. I got more kick in two minutes of excerpted scenes than in all the 102 minutes I spent watching "Lost Souls."
© 2000 by John Stanley. Photos © 2000 by New Line Cinema.
The new
edition of John Stanley's classic "Creature Features"
guide to horror and sci-fi movies is now available at most booksellers.
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