This was a fairly good "Devil" story and certainly worth renting.

GOOD - Decent suspense and cinematography and kudos for pointing out there IS a Satan and converting a non-believer to that fact. Winona Ryder looks very pretty, too, as good as I've seen her. This was before her real-life problems put her in the news and her career took a nosedive. Also the profanity is pretty low in here.

BAD - A somewhat-disappointing finish; some skewed theology (but not as bad as most movies); same cliché scenes where a person should have been shot but the shooter hesitates way too long and is stopped; priests winding up as villains.

OVERALL - it's not a bad film and could have been really good with a tighter script and a little more suspense at the end.

Maya Larkin (Winona Ryder) and John Townsend (Elias Koteas) assist Father Lareaux (John Hurt) in the exorcism of psycho killer Henry Birdson. It fails badly. Lareaux is left in a coma and Maya retrieves some of Birdson's coded writing. She decodes the pages which spells out Peter Kelson. She suspects that Satan intends to take on mortal form just as God in Christ. Peter Kelson (Ben Chaplin) is an author who dismisses the idea of evil with a capital E. He was raised by his uncle Father James (Philip Baker Hall),is dating Claire Van Owen (Sarah Wynter),and writing about the trial of George Viznik.

The strange things happening to Peter do pile up. The problem is that they happen strangely and Ben Chaplin has a cold distance about his personality. Why would the doorman talk about a suicide in the building? Why would a cop talk about a case to him? There is a possibility that his presence is affecting the other people. The problem with his character is a lack of agency which makes it difficult for the protagonist. His shocked weakness is frustrating. Anyways, this should be Maya's movie. Why would the keys be taped to the picture? It would make more sense if it's simply hidden in her desk. The ending is almost anti-climatic. Overall, I like the dark moody tone. The best scenes are Maya's hallucinations. That's all the more reason to make her the protagonist. The editing and the flow is too jagged. The story starts too muddled. I like some aspects but the bad overwhelms the good. Evil wins.

LOST SOULS is another religious thriller that came out at the turn of the millennium. There were loads of these made with titles such as BLESS THE CHILD, END OF DAYS, and STIGMATA, and truth be told not many of them are very good. As a rule they've dated quite badly since release like a lot of early 2000s films and most aren't worth bothering going back and watching, and I'm afraid to say that LOST SOULS is such a film. It's not totally bad but it's not very interesting either.

The main character in the movie is played by British actor Ben Chaplin who becomes involved with some exorcists and weird characters who follow him around. He soon learns that he's part of an age-old prophecy which is supposedly about to come true but being an atheist he's having none of it. A fine-looking Winona Ryder is the obsessive who follows him trying to convince him that the prophecy is indeed real.

For a horror film this is surprisingly limited in scope. There are a few clichéd scare sequences and various weird characters running amok. At least they don't go through all the old possession routines which is usual for a film like this. The problem with LOST SOULS is that it's such a boring production. The Catholic characters are lifeless and dull and actors like John Hurt fail to bring them to life. The writing is very ordinary and even shocking events fail to seem out of the ordinary. Director Janusz Kaminski has done some good work as cinematographer but he has little aptitude for directing as evinced here.