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Lost Souls
New Line // R // February 27, 2001
List Price: $24.98 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
I recall seeing the trailer for "Lost Souls" back in the Fall of '99, thought it looked reasonably interesting, and filed the film away in my mind. Jump forward to nearly a year later as I watch the same trailer once again fill that large silver screen. "Lost Souls" garnered the lowest overall rating I've seen on Rotten Tomatoes and is one of only a handful of films from 2000 to get a score in the single digits. Unlike most, I suppose, I didn't find "Lost Souls" to be a particularly bad movie (especially not when compared to the excruciatingly awful and similarly religious themed "Bless The Child"), but although I didn't find the film unbearable, it's far more boring than a horror/thriller should be.
"End of Days" pitted perennial action hero Arnie against Nick Scratch, and this time, Satan faces a more formidable opponent -- a chain-smoking Winona Ryder. Ms. Ryder stars as Maya Larkin, and for some odd reason, the theme from "Maya The Bee" kept buzzing through my head. Anyway, Maya, a recovering former host to hellspawn, learns from a botchered exorcism she attends that the antichrist is coming. After deciphering an apparently-not-overly-complicated encrypted message, Maya stumbles open author/lawyer Peter Kelson (Ben Chaplin), who's blissfully unaware of his satanic heritage. After some convincing, Maya and Peter set about to stop the transformation and the satanic cultist hordes, with fatal consequences, if necessary.
Despite a very promising opening, "Lost Souls" quickly shifted gears and headed towards the magical land of sheer boredom, and despite the remarkable job New Line's DVD staff has done with the video and audio, it was all I could do to not get up and do something more exciting, like clean my kitchen counters or rearrange my sock drawer. The ending is quite anticlimatic, leaving me feeling like Mick after the destruction of the demon in "Idle Hands". "What? That's it?" Given the talent involved (particularly the incredible work by first-time director Janusz Kaminski), "Lost Souls" is a disappointment.
Video: "Lost Souls" is a beautifully shot film, and New Line's DVD presentation is spectacular. The bleached color palette. The 2.40:1 image is grainy, but intentionally so (as mentioned in the commentary), and the grain combined with the desaturated colors do an excellent job of setting an appropriately cold, creepy, detached mood, even though the script fails to fully take advantage. Blacks seemed to be the slightest bit inconsistent at time, though largely very deep and very...well, black. Whatever problems I noticed might be from some possibly-not-entirely-successful tweaking I did the other day. Oh well. Aside from some minimal (and likely unavoidable, all things considered) edge enhancement, "Lost Souls" is an incredible looking disc and fits very well alongside New Line's other strong efforts.
Audio: I went a couple of weeks hardly watching any DVDs, and occassionally, listening to a series of great sounding discs in a row makes it a little harder to fully appreciate the capability of DVD audio. If I were wearing socks while watching "Lost Souls", they'd have been knocked off clear across the room. As usual, I can't comment on the quality of the DTS track, but the Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is nothing short of phenomenal. Every channel is brimming with action, though the audio team manages to mix things in such a way that the audio never for a moment seems false or gimmicky. This is the sort of track where I feel as if the disc grabs me from my couch by the hair and slams me directly into the movie -- quite enveloping.
Supplements: Though not a Platinum Series release, New Line has still piled on enough extras to make for a respectable special edition. Most notable is the commentary with director Janusz Kaminski and cinematographer Francesca...errr...Mauro Fiore. Although two cinematophers would seemingly make for a very technically heavy discussion, the track is much more heavily weighted towards the themes and such of "Lost Souls". It's worth a listen if you enjoyed the film. Commentary is also an option for the deleted scenes, which are presented in anamorphic widescreen. Also enhanced for 16x9 televisions is the theatrical trailer, presented in its full 5.1 splendor.
Conclusion: Though both the disc and the feature are brilliant on a technical level, "Lost Souls" does seem to lack the sort of soul a film needs to be genuinely enjoyable. Though hardly painful to sit through, I wouldn't recommend "Lost Souls" as anything more than a rental.
"End of Days" pitted perennial action hero Arnie against Nick Scratch, and this time, Satan faces a more formidable opponent -- a chain-smoking Winona Ryder. Ms. Ryder stars as Maya Larkin, and for some odd reason, the theme from "Maya The Bee" kept buzzing through my head. Anyway, Maya, a recovering former host to hellspawn, learns from a botchered exorcism she attends that the antichrist is coming. After deciphering an apparently-not-overly-complicated encrypted message, Maya stumbles open author/lawyer Peter Kelson (Ben Chaplin), who's blissfully unaware of his satanic heritage. After some convincing, Maya and Peter set about to stop the transformation and the satanic cultist hordes, with fatal consequences, if necessary.
Despite a very promising opening, "Lost Souls" quickly shifted gears and headed towards the magical land of sheer boredom, and despite the remarkable job New Line's DVD staff has done with the video and audio, it was all I could do to not get up and do something more exciting, like clean my kitchen counters or rearrange my sock drawer. The ending is quite anticlimatic, leaving me feeling like Mick after the destruction of the demon in "Idle Hands". "What? That's it?" Given the talent involved (particularly the incredible work by first-time director Janusz Kaminski), "Lost Souls" is a disappointment.
Video: "Lost Souls" is a beautifully shot film, and New Line's DVD presentation is spectacular. The bleached color palette. The 2.40:1 image is grainy, but intentionally so (as mentioned in the commentary), and the grain combined with the desaturated colors do an excellent job of setting an appropriately cold, creepy, detached mood, even though the script fails to fully take advantage. Blacks seemed to be the slightest bit inconsistent at time, though largely very deep and very...well, black. Whatever problems I noticed might be from some possibly-not-entirely-successful tweaking I did the other day. Oh well. Aside from some minimal (and likely unavoidable, all things considered) edge enhancement, "Lost Souls" is an incredible looking disc and fits very well alongside New Line's other strong efforts.
Audio: I went a couple of weeks hardly watching any DVDs, and occassionally, listening to a series of great sounding discs in a row makes it a little harder to fully appreciate the capability of DVD audio. If I were wearing socks while watching "Lost Souls", they'd have been knocked off clear across the room. As usual, I can't comment on the quality of the DTS track, but the Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is nothing short of phenomenal. Every channel is brimming with action, though the audio team manages to mix things in such a way that the audio never for a moment seems false or gimmicky. This is the sort of track where I feel as if the disc grabs me from my couch by the hair and slams me directly into the movie -- quite enveloping.
Supplements: Though not a Platinum Series release, New Line has still piled on enough extras to make for a respectable special edition. Most notable is the commentary with director Janusz Kaminski and cinematographer Francesca...errr...Mauro Fiore. Although two cinematophers would seemingly make for a very technically heavy discussion, the track is much more heavily weighted towards the themes and such of "Lost Souls". It's worth a listen if you enjoyed the film. Commentary is also an option for the deleted scenes, which are presented in anamorphic widescreen. Also enhanced for 16x9 televisions is the theatrical trailer, presented in its full 5.1 splendor.
Conclusion: Though both the disc and the feature are brilliant on a technical level, "Lost Souls" does seem to lack the sort of soul a film needs to be genuinely enjoyable. Though hardly painful to sit through, I wouldn't recommend "Lost Souls" as anything more than a rental.
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