****SPOILERS**** The movie "Lost souls" starts off with an exorcism of a former mathematics professor Henry Birdson, John Diehl, who's in an asylum after he went mad and murdered his entire family. The exorcism goes terribly wrong with the priest preforming it Father Lareaux, John Hurt, ending up hospitalized with an emotional breakdown.
At the exorcism is Maya Larkin, Winona Ryder, who was herself exorcised when she was thirteen and with all the confusion in Birdson's hospital room Maya grabbed a number of papers that Birdson was writing numbers on that seemed to have been coded only for Birdson to understand. Myra at home trying to decipher Birdson's number code sees on TV Peter Kelson, Ben Chaplin, a writer being interviewed and is oddly attracted to him.
After being exorcised as a little girl Myra, after having her mind and body restored, developed an ability to sense the Devil whenever he was near and had that same kind of felling when she saw Peter on TV. Maya follows her instincts by going to Peter's apartment to see if their, her instincts, right or wrong about him. She also sees that the number code of Birdson has Peter's name spelled out as the the Greek letters X-E-S thats sex backward; which is the numerical equivalent of the Greek number 666. Also when Peter meets Maya he feels a strong attraction to her as if he knows her or knew her sometime in his past and slowly develops a strange friendship with her.
Strange things also begin to happen to Peter after he encountered Maya where his next door and nosy neighbor Mrs. Levotsky, Anna Berger, is later found hanged. Later he's almost killed at a party by John (Elias Koteas), a deacon who knows Maya, when he put a gun to Peter's face only to fail to pull the trigger.
The attempt on Peter's life by someone that Maya knew alerted Peter to Mayra's intentions for him. Later he went to the school where she teaches to confront her only to find out from Maya that he was chosen by the Devil to have his body and soul taken over by him and thus become the Antichrist of Revelaions! This was supposed to happen when Peter reached his 33rd birthday.
Even though this type of story has been done many times before in the movies and TV "Lost Souls" does rise above the level of exploitation that is so common in exorcism movies and the acting by both Chaplin & Ryder is far above of what you'd expect from a film like this.
I especially liked Ben Chaplin who was totally unaware of what the Devil had in store for him until almost the very end of the movie and at first tried to convince himself that all this was just a bad dream. But sadly the truth was far too powerful for him to suppress and in the end it was the Devil who won the battle to take over both Peter's body and soul.
The only thing, for me at least, that dragged down the film "Lost Souls" was it's very unconvincing and contrived ending. That could have been made more effective by the writer of the movie if Peter not Maya was made to put an end to the Devil's, Satan's, evil plan on Earth that he cooked up for Peter. That would have made Peter far more sympathetic to the audience as well as Maya as he already was in the movie up to that point.
At the exorcism is Maya Larkin, Winona Ryder, who was herself exorcised when she was thirteen and with all the confusion in Birdson's hospital room Maya grabbed a number of papers that Birdson was writing numbers on that seemed to have been coded only for Birdson to understand. Myra at home trying to decipher Birdson's number code sees on TV Peter Kelson, Ben Chaplin, a writer being interviewed and is oddly attracted to him.
After being exorcised as a little girl Myra, after having her mind and body restored, developed an ability to sense the Devil whenever he was near and had that same kind of felling when she saw Peter on TV. Maya follows her instincts by going to Peter's apartment to see if their, her instincts, right or wrong about him. She also sees that the number code of Birdson has Peter's name spelled out as the the Greek letters X-E-S thats sex backward; which is the numerical equivalent of the Greek number 666. Also when Peter meets Maya he feels a strong attraction to her as if he knows her or knew her sometime in his past and slowly develops a strange friendship with her.
Strange things also begin to happen to Peter after he encountered Maya where his next door and nosy neighbor Mrs. Levotsky, Anna Berger, is later found hanged. Later he's almost killed at a party by John (Elias Koteas), a deacon who knows Maya, when he put a gun to Peter's face only to fail to pull the trigger.
The attempt on Peter's life by someone that Maya knew alerted Peter to Mayra's intentions for him. Later he went to the school where she teaches to confront her only to find out from Maya that he was chosen by the Devil to have his body and soul taken over by him and thus become the Antichrist of Revelaions! This was supposed to happen when Peter reached his 33rd birthday.
Even though this type of story has been done many times before in the movies and TV "Lost Souls" does rise above the level of exploitation that is so common in exorcism movies and the acting by both Chaplin & Ryder is far above of what you'd expect from a film like this.
I especially liked Ben Chaplin who was totally unaware of what the Devil had in store for him until almost the very end of the movie and at first tried to convince himself that all this was just a bad dream. But sadly the truth was far too powerful for him to suppress and in the end it was the Devil who won the battle to take over both Peter's body and soul.
The only thing, for me at least, that dragged down the film "Lost Souls" was it's very unconvincing and contrived ending. That could have been made more effective by the writer of the movie if Peter not Maya was made to put an end to the Devil's, Satan's, evil plan on Earth that he cooked up for Peter. That would have made Peter far more sympathetic to the audience as well as Maya as he already was in the movie up to that point.