A Floresta das Almas Perdidas

The first half hour of the movie is fine, nothing special. The second half of the movie is just strange, it gets quite boring at times, and I found myself checking the time frequently. This movie should have been much better, there was no tension at all, it just felt lame. The ending was completely unsatisfying. Thankfully the movie is only 70 minutes long including 5 minutes of credits. It is sort of interesting, but nothing exciting about it.

If you are looking for a fast paced gore fest...don't watch this one. Just move along. Nothing for you to see here. :::grin::: This film takes it's time to tell a story and gives you visually stunning images to go along with it's deep, philosophical discussions as things build and build.

This is the first feature film for writer/director José Pedro Lopes and it's a fantastic effort bringing in three awards to date from the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival, Fant, Bilbao Fantasy Film Festival, and Triple Six Horror Film Festival and the awards are well deserved.

It tells it's story and lets you figure things out. And, it gives you everything you need to do so.

As I said, the film is shot beautifully. The black and white is perfect for the subject matter. It plays off like a modern day Bergman film - moody and dark and full of things lurking in the corners. There's a richness to the visuals that I found to be very pleasing. The cinematography was stunning.

The film is a foreign language film...unless you're from Portugal, of course. However, the film isn't heavy on dialogue, so those who fear subtitles need not be too scared. It's a drama with horrific moments that hits every point it makes an effort to hit. The acting is fantastic and all the characters seem real and well rounded.

I highly recommend this...I'm going to say it again... "thinking person's horror film". I believe film lovers, horror lovers, and mystery lovers will enjoy this immensely. Well worth a viddy!

The film is an underwhelming, underachieved Portuguese horror film about (without giving away spoilers) two people who meet each other at a popular suicide spot after going there on the decision to commit suicide. I really wanted to give this film a higher rating because it (again, without giving away spoilers) had a great idea but it was just clumsily done falling into cliché horror tropes that really didn't serve it any good. It feels like exposition that initially has good premise but just can't argue to save itself. The black and white cinematography serves the polar motives and overall mood nicely with emptiness and shallowness but the film disappointingly fell apart when it could have taken a great idea so much further with greater meaning and better execution.

The Forest of the Lost Souls is a Portuguese psychological thriller that mixes arthouse cinema with slaughterhouse passages. Shot in black and white and featuring few dialogues, the movie revolves around a young woman and an elderly man who meet in a forest that is known for its elevated number of suicide cases. The film focuses on the consequence of their fateful chance meeting.

On the positive side, the film oozes with atmosphere. The images in black and white, the lack of dialogues and the isolated natural landscapes complement one another very well. The acting performances are strong enough to get you interested in the main characters and their background stories. The movie gets more violent in the second half but the transition is coherent, precise and tense as it never feels rushed. The numerous allusions to different works of literature give the film a somewhat intellectual touch that suits its overall style very well.

On the negative side, this movie is particularly short with a running time of only seventy-three minutes. The fact that this movie is sold for nearly forty bucks in Canada is quite outrageous. In addition to this, the film has numerous lengths. The opening ten minutes offer an exposition consisting of shots introducing the natural landscapes and the main characters before any noteworthy action unfolds. The final ten minutes offer a resolution consisting of shots from a music festival and a short conversation on a cell phone that don't add anything to the film. If the director had gotten rid of the unnecessary exposition and resolution as well as of lengthy shots portraying natural landscapes, then the whole story could have been told in less than forty minutes without leaving anything out or rushing any elements. The script should have been much more elaborate as the promising premise isn't exploited to its entire potential.

In the end, The Forest of the Lost Souls is a psychological thriller with mild horror elements that convinces with its strong atmosphere, sinister cinematic elements and promising premise. However, the movie is very short and nevertheless includes numerous lengths. The Blu-ray of the movie includes some very short looks behind the scenes, one minute of deleted scenes and a short film entitled St. John that has a length of one minute and a half. Apparently, director and writer José Pedro Lopes likes to keep things short. If that's your kind of thing as well, don't hesitate to give this independent flick from Portugal a chance.

I wonder if a non-portuguese viewer has the notion of how bad the acting was in this movie. People do not talk like this in Portugal and the actors were comical to say the least, the dialogues unrealistic and the emotion just wasn't there. Predictable story, done 2 times before already in a supposedly suicidal forest that doesn't exist at all in the country (make no mistake, the forest is real, just doesn't have a suicidal history attached to it). Suicidal people tend to not lock their cars before committing suicide, wear make-up as if they were going to a night club and talk like they were reading the ingredients of a chocolate-milk package. There are way better movies out there regarding suicide, spirits and stalkers, this is not one of them. Even the black and white does not save this comical effort... next!