Underrated Supernatural Horror Film With Stranger Things Star Needs Saving
Winona Ryder is most recently best known for her portrayal of Joyce Byers in Netflix’s Stranger Things, but in the year 2000 she also starred in an apocalyptic supernatural horror film called Lost Souls that you’ve probably never heard of. Well, the film itself was released in the year 2000, but was actually filmed in 1998. After playing a rousing game of “musical release dates” with other similar films in the sub-genre, this underrated possession flick flew mostly under the radar, bombed at the box office, received terrible reviews, and is nowhere to be found on streaming.
However, I think Lost Souls failed before it ever premiered and deserves a second look because it’s a surprisingly well-done film despite its 8 percent critical score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Doomed From The Start
Originally slated for a 1999 release, Lost Souls repeatedly had its release date shifted around because of the influx of other similar supernatural horror films, like End of Days and Stigmata, that were about to make their theatrical rounds.
New Line Cinema decided to push the release date to February 2000, but the studio once again had a change of heart because Lost Souls would then have to compete with Scream 3, which was the horror franchise that people would be going to seek out rather than the relatively unknown Janusz Kaminski’s directorial debut.
They say that the third time’s a charm, but when New Line Cinema gave Lost Souls its final release date of October 13 2020, it then had to compete with the theatrical re-release of The Exorcist, meaning that its theatrical premiere was once again overshadowed by an established franchise occupying the same genre.
A Victim Of Possession Movie Fatigue?
Theatrical tomfoolery aside, Lost Souls was eaten alive by critics and audiences alike, resulting in the aforementioned 8 percent critical score against a slightly better but still terrible 22 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. Though I was only 12 years old when this movie came out, I’m thinking in hindsight that audiences were simply experiencing possession-movie fatigue at this point, and just wrote this one off a little too aggressively.
While I agree that Lost Souls is a by-the-numbers possession story after re-watching it this week, it has a lot of things going for it that its contemporaries were lacking, making it an effective thriller for any fans of the genre who are willing to check it out for the first time, or even give it a second chance now that some time has passed since its original release.
I’ll also admit that this movie scared the crap out of me when I was 12, and the scares that I’ve thought about for 24 years hold up better than I could have imagined.
An Exorcism Gone Wrong
Lost Souls is a solid outing because its premise is so simple.
Winona Ryder’s Maya Larkin attends an exorcism in the company of two priests, Father James (Philip Baker Hall) and Father Lareaux (John Hurt), as well as a man named John Townsend (Elias Koteas), to exorcise Henry Birdson (John Diehl), an institutionalized criminal experiencing severe epileptic seizures.
Maya, who teaches at James and Lareaux’s church, was asked to tag along because she was once possessed by a demon when she was younger, and the priests thought her insights would be invaluable to the case in question. The exorcism fails miserably, renders Birdson brain-dead, and causes a considerable amount of trouble because the nurses think the exorcism was unnecessary in the first place.
The Mark Of The Beast
Lost Souls takes a sinister turn after Maya sneaks out of the psychiatric clinic with Birdson’s written ramblings, which are written in a code that she has to decipher. When she cracks the code, it spells out the name Peter Kelson (Ben Chaplin), which leads her to believe that the demon that was possessing Birdson was trying to tell her who’s next. After performing some mental gymnastics while dealing with her own questionable mental state, Maya deduces that Peter, a relatively famous parapsychologist, will become the host for the antichrist on his 33rd birthday.
By-The-Numbers But Beautifully Executed
I’ll admit that while the general story for Lost Souls is incredibly derivative, Kaminski’s filming style sets it apart from the possession movies it was competing with. The visuals themselves are high-contrast by design, and the resulting color saturation makes for a gritty viewing experience. What’s more, there are plenty of jump-scares to go around, but unlike other horror movies, you never see them coming.
There aren’t a lot of over-the-top theatrics in Lost Souls, but there is a brooding sense of unease throughout its 97-minute runtime that’s further elevated by a film score composed by Jan A. P. Kaczmarek.
Stylistically speaking, Lost Souls is an ambitious film with a deliberately grimy aesthetic that Winona Ryder plays off of beautifully.
Doesn’t Deserve All The Hate
GFR SCORE
Lost Souls doesn’t really offer anything new, but leans into all of the familiar possession movie genre tropes in a way that’s more refreshing than critics and audiences gave it credit for. From its tight closeups to its vaguely hallucinatory cinematography, Lost Souls may not be the most memorable supernatural horror of its time, but certainly doesn’t deserve the disproportionate amount of hate it received when it was originally released.
As of this writing, Lost Souls isn’t available for streaming through a subscription, but you can rent or purchase the title on demand through Apple TV+.
