Really more of an erotic drama than a horror movie, Spirit Lost is like an episode of Black Shoe Diaries with a supernatural twist. Although it’s a BET production, it wasn’t made to air on the network (the nekkid boobies are a hint), so we’re not subjected to cheesy cameos by anyone named Jeezy, Scrappy, or Pookie trying to promote their upcoming album. Instead, we have a competent yet tame and perfunctory ghost story with more soft shadows than a Lifetime movie of the week.
Leon, whose erratic acting ability could justly earn him the title of the black Kevin Costner, stars as John, a painter who moves from the big city to a coastal hick town with his wife Willy (Regina Taylor) to focus on his art. He ends up focusing on the horny, oft-naked woman in his attic, however…and can you really blame him? She’s horny and oft-naked! Even better, she’s a ghost, so if Willy ever walks in on him doing a nude pelvic grind on the attic floor, he can just say he’s doing some sort of sensual yoga. It’s like having an invisible porn stash! Happy ending, right? Well, no.
Willy apparently has some issue with the situation — something about “infidelity” or “spectral gonorrhea,” not to mention the fact that the ghost tries to kill her several times. She does some research and discovers that the ghost is a slave gal named Arabella (Cynda Williams) who a white trader promised to marry, only to run off to Europe to get hitched to a “respectable” white woman. She died of a broken heart and possibly rickets, since a lack of GNC stores in the 18th century made vitamin D supplements hard to come by.
Willy finds some old Jamaican ladies who conveniently know how to exorcise the ghost — something that I guess is common knowledge for all Caribbean people — and sends Arabella where the sun don’t shine. We’re supposed to believe that the couple lives happily ever after, but we all know that she’ll never trust him to go the bathroom alone anymore, much less the attic.
