Lost Souls

(2000) **1/2

The word is "pootertoot." I can't tell if it came from the Legend of T.J. O'Pootertoot's sketch from the Ben Stiller show or from something earlier, but a friend of mine from my publishing days used it to describe any generic theme restaurant with weak, overpriced drinks. I bring it up because I'm boosting it for Horrorthon purposes, starting right now. A Horrorthon pootertoot is a kind of horror movie that's been popping up often in the past six years or so; it features a slumming big-name actor, enviably high production values, and total crap everything else. Hide and Seek with Robert De Niro was a pootertoo on my roster last year, this year's FeardotCom qualifies although the actors aren't really big names. And now I've got Lost Souls, starring Winona Ryder.

Noni plays the secular cheerleader for a trio of Catholic priests who believe the anti-Christ will come to Earth by possessing an unknowing man on his 33rd birthday, making this movie a really boring version of The Omen. Can you imagine how honked off you'd be if you were the anti-Christ and you didn't get the keys until your teens and twenties were past? What a rip-off. The team perform a botched exorcism that reveals the identity of the poor sap, puppy-eyed Ben Chaplin, and the plot oozes along from there.

This movie just never actually happens. Every idea is more like a hint of an idea mixed in with corn meal. Example: Winona gives Ben the tape of the exorcism, and because he's the anti-Chosen he can't hear anything. The grouchy lady next door bangs on the wall and eventually commits suicide, but he thinks the tape is blank. Um, okay. What are his other Satanic powers? Can he not see Oprah, or something? After he finds out he wanders into a church for guidance, and the big wooden Jesus's wrists break and he spins around on his foot nail so he's upside-down, and suddenly Ben believes. I might, too, but I'd probably try that trick in at least four more churches before it got old.

It's not fair to say this movie's complete crap, since it was the directorial debut of Janusz Kaminski, a very talented director of photography who has dp'd on every Steven Spielberg movie since Shindler's List. His style would seem the perfect blend of artful and gloomy for a good scary tale, but this story is so thin and washed-out the slick images even started to put me off a little. It's too bad he couldn't find a better script, his talents are wasted here.

Which brings us to Winona. I'm always a shade conflicted with her because even after all the movies she's tanked I'm still struck by her beauty. But she's awful. Kaminski does get some great shots of her. In the final scenes, she looks so gaunt and hopeless I was reminded of Mia Farrow's skeletal stage in Rosemary's Baby. And there's this super close look at her eyes as she goads an evil spirit into revealing


itself, but she ends the scene with such a flat, nothing look on her face it's all for nada. Mostly she just sulks around, her face framed by an ill-advised mousy hairdo that I'm sure was meant to make her look serious. Oh, Winona.

At a pootertoot bar, you would probably need over two and a half drinks to get the zap of a real one, and that math applies here as well. So this is like getting about 37% of a horror movie. Somehow, it feels like less.