A Floresta das Almas Perdidas

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 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.

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.

Really beautiful idea, black and white is cool, gives a sense of tension.. The plot work, I think has been just done in a very clumsy way

Meeting in a strange forest, a disparate couple comes to a sacred spot in the forest looking to end their lives in a location chosen for the same feat only for their troubles to start once she takes matters into her own hands and forces far more pain and suffering on him than he expected.

For the most part, this was an exceptionally engaging and enjoyable effort. One of the film's better qualities is the fact that there's a rather profound and chilling nature of the material present throughout here. Being filmed in black-and-white gives this a far more evocative and poignant feel to coincide with the subject matter, for this one is so deeply rooted in Catholic guilt that the two are blended together in absolutely stellar quantities where they grow closer together due to his past moves this along nicely. From the guilt he experiences over failing his family and not preventing his daughters' death to the general callousness regarded for life is allowed to come together in the way they show this being filmed as there's very few wasted shots or potential throughout here with everything intertwined throughout here. The woods are haunting and disturbing, the desolate nature is truly felt and the entire segment has a realistic tone that is quite engaging as it's a brief section of the film that doesn't feel anywhere near as long as it does which makes it stand out extremely well. While nowhere near as potent, the film's second half is a strikingly fun and enjoyable stalker effort with the grieving family completely unaware of the actions that have taken place in the forest. This stellar home-invasion effort features some absolutely fun moments, from the initial scenes featuring them being followed home that is quite creepy, her early prowling around the house which gives this a rather eerie feel to the actual attack on the family members themselves that hold this section together, there are some rather interesting and enjoyable ideas throughout here. This is perhaps the kind of strangely art- house take on the setup which is unique and gives this a different enough take on the style by itself which gives this the kind of appeal anyway.While these here work for the film, it does have a rather problematic feature about it. The film's main problem is that there's quite a differing tone present throughout here that doesn't really do this much favors. Going from the first half which is a solid and introspective take on the nature of suicidal guilt and what's going through a person's mind, this naturalistic take vanishes in the second half which just screams to belong in a different movie. It's all way too scattershot and varied in what's going on and doesn't make any sense what's going on which is a far cry from what happened previously, never offers up anything about what's going on and just makes for a baffling series of actions that don't connect at all to what happened since the entire sequence feels so different from what came previously. It's the main topic holding this one down.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Language, Violence and intense themes of suicide.