Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

Good concept, poorly executed.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

This film is about the millennial theories that predicted the coming of Satan at the end of the millennium. In the film, a famous American lawyer is contacted by Maya, a young Catholic who believes he will become the Anti-Christ. The two main roles are embodied, respectively, by Ben Chaplin and Winona Ryder. Both actors did a very good job, building the characters in a very interesting and psychologically intense way. Ryder is especially compelling and can easily dominate the public's attention.The script brings us an interesting yet less original idea. However, it didn't worked. Something else is missing in that to make the plot truly dense and appealing. It's a simple story that does not justify a movie because it's not developed the way it should be. The result is a boring film made of flat dialogues and situations. The ending is truly abrupt and disappointing, leaving us to think "is this just it?".I expected much more from this film. I praise the good performances of the two main actors, who lend talent to a film that in fact does not deserve it.

'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'.

The reasons why Lost Souls was badly regarded become pretty obvious when you see the film. There are two that come to mind. It is stupid, and not exiting. On the other hand, it's not exactly unwatchable either. If nothing else, at least Janusz Kaminski's antique looking photography makes a nice picture, but in fact Lost Souls did a bit more for me, only a bit though.Maya Larkin is a teacher at a seminary school. She and her Catholic colleagues are convinced that Satan is about to enter human form, more specifically, the body of author Peter Kelson. His name was mentioned by a patient in a mental ward who was subject to an exorcism that went wrong and left Maya's tutor Father Lareaux on death's doorstep. Now Maya is going after Peter, hoping to find him before Satan does.One of the reasons I like Lost Souls is sort of a matter of personal taste. I've always loved Winona Rider, she has a great screen presence and her body of work shows a wide variety of faces. One could argue however that this is her most superficial role, but even so, she is not a lazy actress. Too bad the script didn't give her quite enough of a character.There are three things that Lost Soul could use; a brain, an energy boost, and perhaps another ten to fifteen minutes in running length. The ending is rushed and is about as anti-climactic as cinema can get. When I see this kind of thing happen, sometimes I want to think that maybe there was a longer ending planned, but something went wrong in the editing room.None of us can ever know. What we do know is that Lost Souls is dumb, and while it is probably destined for obsurity, it's not unwatchable.

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.