My friend Greg and I went to the movie theatre to see "Lost Souls" on Thursday, which, as it turns out, is just another lazy rip-off of "Rosemary's Baby." Wynona Ryder plays the daughter of a Catholic Priest who does exorcisms as his specialty. Right away, she has a flashback of when her priest/dad exorcised evil from her when she was younger. I guess this is to establish why she now must help him exorcise some guy in a mental hospital. Next scene, a peripheral character is introduced, and I say to Greg, "She dies." He says, "How do you know?" I say, "I've seen too many movies." "Oh." he says. Thirty seconds later, another peripheral character is introduced. "He dies too," I say. Greg does not respond this time, but by the end of the film, both characters were dead. (I also instinctively "knew" they were both part of "the conspiracy," but I didn't want to give that away to Greg, because he would say "what conspiracy?" and then I would have to apologize for knowing and revealing the plot of the movie after only five minutes, while never having seen it or any trailers for it.)

The two main characters are the girl (played by Wynona) and a guy who wrote a book on how "there is no such thing as evil" but who is, for some unknown reason, destined since birth to take the form of Satan later in the film, on his 33rd birthday. There are several implications about them having the same dead parents and being born of incest and some nonsense about bloodtypes, but none of that is ever resolved. Randomly placed spooky scenes with dark lighting and cliched slow-motion effects disrupt any attempts at explaining the REASONS for any events that occur. Maybe satanic stuff is too mysterious and kooky for us mere humans to decipher, but Wynona Ryder's character managed to break Satan's alphabet code. (Apparently, Satan writes his scary messages with numbers instead of letters because numbers are more scary, especially to teenagers. In fact, a restless teenage girl sitting behind us at the theater screeched, "Gaaahhhd...what's the deal with all these numbers?")

In one scene, Wynona's arm is sliced open with a knife by the possessed mental patient. Then she and the writer watch in horror as the patient morphs into a big, hairy creature. But the scene cuts before the creature guy is finished morphing. The very next scene has the two of them at a secluded roadside rest stop. They're sipping coffee and chatting in the serene nighttime air. There is never any explanation for: (1) what happened to the creature, (2) how they escaped it, (3) how they got there so quickly, (4) where the coffee came from, (5) who stitched-up Wynona's deep knife wound, etc.

Of course, eventually Wynona's dad/priest becomes possessed by Satan himself, and then SHE must exorcise evil from HIM. Then he dies while uttering some helpful information (surprise), which leads them to a church, which turns out to be an "evil" church and a trap, but they again escape without explanation. So, the two main characters suddenly appear alone again in a car. We are subjected to a few minutes of pointless car-driving-around footage and looks of bewilderment on their faces before they stop to chat again. Once the car's clock shows 6:66 PM (?), the writer guy finally becomes possessed by Satan (the indication that he has now become Satan is that he smiles), so Wynona quickly yields the powerful weapon that will destroy SATAN, THE MASTER OF ALL EVIL, ARRIVING AFTER ALL THIS HOOPLA TO CONQUER THE WORLD: she shoots him with a pistol.

Rather than "Lost Souls," this movie should've been called "Lost Script Pages." I think Hollywood is sad. There's little excitement in going to the movies any more. No wonder so many huge movie chains are filing for bankruptcy. These movies are barely worth rental price, much less the theater price.

Response From RinkWorks:

I saw this movie myself last weekend. Unfortunately, I spent most of my time in the theater squirming around trying to find a comfortable position to sit in that didn't put pressure on my super-duper-extra-mega-large Diet Coke-filled bladder while simultaneously trying to decide how to put the moves on my date while in such a condition. Consequently, I ended up almost thinking this was a good movie until nearly the end, when the whole thing just sort of falls apart.

However, in retrospect, it wasn't a good movie before the end, either. It sucked pretty much all the way through. I don't think, however, that you got all the details right. The way I remember it, Wynona Ryder's parents *were* dead, and the priest was just a friend or something -- but I could be wrong. And the writer/antichrist guy, his *father* was that other priest, the brother of his mother -- hence the incest angle that apparently fills some biblical prophecy. He and Wynona don't have the same parents -- it just happens to be that both their parents are dead -- or at least the writer dude thinks his dad is dead, when really his "uncle" is his dad.

But other than that, I pretty much agree with what you wrote here. I was especially disappointed in the end. They kept saying over and over how they had to stop the transformation *before* it began -- and yet, Wynona clearly shoots the dude *after* he's been transformed, at least as far as everything the plot had led us to believe is concerned. Whatever.