The directorial debut of longtime Spielberg cinematographer and two-time Oscar winner (for Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan) Kaminski is a muddy, senseless mess. There’s a story here, somewhere, there’s got to be, but I’ll be damned if I can find it. Lost Souls is nominally concerned with the efforts of a crack team of Catholic exorcists — led by a bedridden Hurt and feisty, hollow-eyed pal Ryder — to defeat Satan before he can take over the body of New York true-crime writer Peter Kelson (Chaplin) on his 33rd birthday. But rarely have I seen a film expend so much energetic imagery in the service of so barely serviceable a storyline. Characters — seemingly important ones — wander in and out of frame and then vanish altogether. Have they been swallowed up whole by the dark and hoary ancient evil that palpably lurks around every fog-shrouded corner? Or did the editing just get out of hand? I suspect the latter. Not bad enough to be fun nor clever enough to be interesting, it’s instead a shamelessly dull, difficult-to-grasp foray into not the dark but the dim.
This article appears in October 20 • 2000.