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Grade: D-

Verdict: A loser.

Details: Winona Ryder and Ben Chaplin. Directed by Janusz Kaminski. Rated R for violence, profanity and demonic possession. One hour, 42 minutes.

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Review: I'll be damned - er, darned - if I could tell what the hell - um, heck - was going on during most of "Lost Souls."

Stuck in purgatory - I mean, in limbo; make that, on the shelf - for over a year, this movie combines murky visuals with an even murkier plot.

Here's what I could glean. Winona Ryder plays Maya, a woman given to heavy eye-liner and hallucinations. That's because, we later learn, she was possessed by demons when she was younger and underwent an exorcism. Having had her own brush with the Devil, she now spends most of her time running around with an elderly priest (John Hurt) while he perfroms exorcisms.

. An excursion to a mental hospital run by Alfre Woodard (who wisely drops out of sight halfway through the movie) results in an unsuccessful exorcism; the possessed man (John Diehl) - known to most of the staff merely as a murderous psychotic - manages to resist their efforts. As a result, Father John is traumatized and falls into a coma. Maya is left with the certainty that the Devil will become flesh very, very soon. After some rigorous decoding of Diehl's scribblings, she's further convinced that the flesh he plans to inhabit belongs to a handsome writer (Ben Chaplin) who specializes in books about sensational murders.

The rest of the movie descends into incoherence as Maya keeps insisting Chaplin is the Chosen One and Chaplin, quite understandably, remains skeptical. Meanwhile, various other cast members - most noticeably, Philip Baker Hall - stand around looking ominous. And Diehl's killer looney keeps coming at Maya with a knife, but is he real or is he just another hallucination - like the restroom that noisily self-destructs into a mass of brown ooze (yuuuch).

It would be nice to report that Janusz Kaminski, the Oscar-winning cinematographer on "Saving Private Ryan" and "Schindler's List" had successfully made the transition to director. Unfortunately, his addled attempts at atmosphere only underscore the weakness of the script. Odd camera angles, artfully dim lighting and showy tracking shots simply don't make up for suspense or intelligence.

Poor Ryder looks bad and acts worse. Her British co-star, Chaplin, retreats into a kind of glazed-over numbness, as if it were taking every bit of acting ability he has to maintain his rather convincing American accent.

At one point, prior to the initial exorcism, Ryder asks Hurt "Father, why are we doing this?"

Good question.

— Eleanor Rigel Gillespie, Cox News Service