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Outside of The Exorcist, did anyone ever buy into this sort of God-bothering schlock? Janusz Kaminski's directorial debut has taken a year or so to be released, presumably to try and distance it from the similarly slovenly spiritual horrors spewed up during the last year. There's fat chance of that, though, because Lost Souls is right down there with Stigmata, The Ninth Gate and, ironically Bless The Child. Like them, Lost Souls is dumb, anachronistic and takes itself way, way too seriously.
As a cinematographer, Kaminski shot Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan and Schindler's List with flair. Sadly, he's fatally heavy handed as a director, freighting even the most second-hand spooksome schtick with self-important portent. Once the backwards titles are done with, we get numerous dripping taps, gruff-voiced little girls, slo-mo footsteps and bleeding walls grafted onto a vision of America as a dank, bleached-out hellhole with no lighting.
This late arrival in the short-lived devil movie revival should have got lost on its way to the video shop bargain bin. Lazy performances, tragically silly plotting and over-emphatic direction make it as annoying as it is old hat. A total horror.
