|
|
THE FOREST OF THE LOST SOULS
Director: José Pedro Lopes Cast: Daniela Love, Jorge Mota, Mafalda Banquart, Lígia Roque, Lília Lopes, Tiago Jácome MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:11 Release Date: 8/3/18 (limited) |
|
Capsule review by Mark Dujsik | August 2, 2018 About half of The Forest of the Lost Souls is a drama about people who are considering suicide. The other half is a thriller about a psychopath orchestrating a series of perfect murders. The shift is so abrupt that the whole movie feels like two separate ones: One is mournful, introspective, and darkly comic, while the other follows a routine to nowhere special. Writer/director José Pedro Lopes has come up with a complete short story that ends with a wicked twist that needs little explanation to understand where the tale will go next. The problem is that he felt the need to follow through on the logical conclusion of the story, taking us through the inevitable next steps with, admittedly, some style—but not much else. The first half of the story follows Ricardo (Jorge Mota), a man who has arrived in the fictional woods of the title. The forest is famous for people, including Ricardo's elder daughter, ending their lives there. Ricardo meets Carolina (Daniela Love) in the woods, and the two have a lengthy conversation about his life and his uncertainty about suicide. To detail how this part of the story ends would be unfair, since it comes as a genuine shock and a moment of demented inspiration. Up until that point, the movie serves as a thoughtful rumination on Ricardo's state of mind, as well as a fine mystery about how the impish Carolina could be either his salvation or his undoing. After the twist, though, the movie follows Ricardo's younger daughter Filipa (Mafalda Banquart), the third of the story's four protagonists (the older daughter in the prologue, Ricardo after, and a fourth at the end). Whatever could be culled from this character's experience—with a deceased sister, a tormented father, and an emotionally repressed mother (played by Lígia Roque)—is ignored. Lopes is solely concerned with giving us a series of scares and scenes of a stalker stalking, toying with the intended victims and awaiting the moment for a perfect plan to arrive. Lopes clearly has a knack for staging these scenes, framing the stalker as an unseen and unheard entity in the background. The latter half of The Forest of the Lost Souls is sometimes effective as an exercise in ever-present dread, but it's mostly a lengthy, unnecessary epilogue to a chilling short story. Copyright © 2018 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
Buy Related Products Buy the Soundtrack (Digital Download)
|
