Did you know this film was written and directed by Wes Craven? I didn’t going into this. It got decent marketing so maybe I was just too busy rolling my eyes at the film’s premise to read the text on screen while I was turning off my cellphone during the previews in the past few months. I have spoilers for the first ten minutes of the film, so read on at your own discretion, though the movie tries to rush through those scenes as fast as possible anyways.
My Soul to Take starts with a grainy security video that catches a murder on tape and is then spread across the news like wildfire. Just as I’m groaning over this being another movie where we wonder for 90 minutes who it is that’s on this video recording, the movie fast forwards and plays out the whole movie I was expecting in the next ten minutes. The problem is that it still chooses to jump through the same cliché hoops . . . just faster.
Oh, ridiculously unrealistic zoom technology. Oh, so the person we all thought was the killer actually is the killer. Oh, they do unspeakable things to set the…
Did you know this film was written and directed by Wes Craven? I didn’t going into this. It got decent marketing so maybe I was just too busy rolling my eyes at the film’s premise to read the text on screen while I was turning off my cellphone during the previews in the past few months. I have spoilers for the first ten minutes of the film, so read on at your own discretion, though the movie tries to rush through those scenes as fast as possible anyways.
My Soul to Take starts with a grainy security video that catches a murder on tape and is then spread across the news like wildfire. Just as I’m groaning over this being another movie where we wonder for 90 minutes who it is that’s on this video recording, the movie fast forwards and plays out the whole movie I was expecting in the next ten minutes. The problem is that it still chooses to jump through the same cliché hoops . . . just faster.
Oh, ridiculously unrealistic zoom technology. Oh, so the person we all thought was the killer actually is the killer. Oh, they do unspeakable things to set the tone for the movie. Oh, the cop kills them but decides it’s still a good idea to lean in close to the corpse’s face. Oh, someone else decides to do it again. What follows is almost a frame for frame remake of the hilarious SNL digital short with Shia Labeouf.
Unfortunately, once the movie gets a whole cliché film out of the way within the first few minutes, it immediately starts setting up another equally cliché suspense plot. That incredibly silly murder we just witnessed has gone on to spur an urban legend in the quiet town that apparently doesn’t ever clean up car crashes. Sixteen years later and the seven who were born on the night of “The Ripper” assemble for a ceremony that suggests the killer’s soul either went on to inhabit one of them, or that he never died at all. Even though six of the seven don’t take the event seriously at all, we’re supposed to, and when the next scene follows with the first of many murders we’re right back where we started: another whodunit murder movie. And someone might be schizophrenic. Great . . .
Despite a simmering hatred for movies that throw schizophrenia into their stories, I’ll admit that Bug (Max Thieriot, who played the almost useless son role in Chloe earlier this year) occasionally had some successful acting scenes. However, it felt odd seeing him nail his more demanding parts but barely get by on his easier lines, which left me wondering if he’s capable of far more than this film required of him, or if I’m mistaking his actual confusion for his character’s intended confusion.
In retrospect, it feels like Wes Craven originally set out to make the next Assassination of a High School President, but quickly changed his mind and started killing anyone whenever they demanded any development that might accidentally have the by-product of improving the film. Once we catch on that the teenage politics is filled with nothing but dead end death distractions, it becomes more of a nuisance than a treat. Because we’re allowed to take our eye off the ball we quickly figure out one of the film’s highly guarded secrets, though I was actually surprised by a relationship revelation later on, which is what kept me from dramatically lowering my review score.
By the end you’re wishing you didn’t have to watch the painfully dull last fight, so the film tries throwing verbal murder logic at the audience instead. What follows next is one of the funniest scenes I’ve seen in theaters all year, where the blind character suddenly ends up on the second floor of a locked house and falls out of a bedroom closet for no sensible reason whatsoever in the middle of the climax of the movie.
As for whether seeing this in 3D is worth it or not, you might as well be the blind kid hiding in the closet.
Overall Score: 4.75 – Terrible. (4s are terrible in many ways. They’re bad enough that even diehard fans of its genre, director, or cast still probably won’t enjoy it at all, and everyone else will leave the theater incredibly angry. Not only are these not worth renting, you should even change the TV channel on them in the future.)
Did Wes Craven have a bad year, or did he just want to cash in on the 3D craze? He can't answer that right now; he's too busy regretting that he threw schizophrenic storylines into a high school murder whodunit movie that revolves around seven main characters – five of which have less screen time than the fake pet crow in the film. At least they weren’t all vampires.
