My Soul To Take

I’ll keep this one short (maybe, no promises) because this film doesn’t deserve a ton of effort to review. If you’re a huge Wes Craven fan, as I am, it’s likely already too late to warn you away from this one. If you’re not, wait for the Blue-Ray release and then don’t buy that either. Get it on Netflix.

I expected more from the writer/director who brought me Nightmare on Elm Street, The People Under the Stairs, the lesser known film I loved called My Deadly Friend and more. What I got instead was an absolute fucking mess of a movie.

Let’s start with what I expect from a writer of Craven’s caliber. Generally there is a terrific story rooted in some sort of very interesting mythology or research so you always know where his idea germinated and, at the very least, he helps you suspend disbelief a bit with his backstory and just get lost in his horror. This time around there is a clumsy, half-assed effort where a character early on mumbles something about a Haitian belief that schizophrenics aren’t mentally ill, rather, and more sinister, they actually contain multiple souls. Once this minor character spat out that nugget I got excited. I thought “Here we go. Another fascinating mythology unearthed by Craven that he can explore, elaborate on and use to scare the Hell out of people in a credible way.” But no. After that little blurb we never hear it again, the solution to the problem isn’t found by researching the legends and we see the Haitian character only once more in passing.

It’s so clumsy it’s as if Craven watched a rough-cut and thought, “Damn, I forgot to explain where I got this idea.” He then might have turned to an intern and said “Stick a line in there somewhere about that Haitian thing so people don’t think I pulled this out of my ass.”

And while Craven remains in a tie with John Carpenter for creating creepy scenes, like the remains of a burned out ambulance by the river in this one, the small town of Riverton just rings hollow. Populated by the same teenage stereotypes that are Craven’s go-to characters in most of his films none of them are believable, likeable or fleshed out at all. You know the characters because you have seen them all before and seen them done better; rename the teenagers from Nightmare On Elm Street and there you go. We have the horny, piggish jock, the punk that rules the school with an iron fist, the sheepish quiet protagonist with an inner-strength that, why! we just didn’t know he had and the sexy blonde girl that nobody can have. Oh, and the abusive step-parent that Craven has a real thing for. We meet him once and it would have been more subtle if they just had him wear a shirt that said asshole in it. One of the clumsiest scenes ever. He did manage to toss in a bible-thumping good girl but even that isn’t clever or original. Max Thieriot (Catch That Kid) does the best he can with the poorly written Bug and manages a few pretty creepy moments. Unfortunately, for every scary or tense minute there’s another one that is supposed to be but just makes you chuckle a bit.

The gist of the story is the tale of the Riverton Ripper. This guy murders his pregnant wife and when he dies his multiple souls seek out babies to take refuge in. 7 kids are born on the night the Ripper dies. Known as the Riverton Seven these kids are destined to be slaughtered as the ripper attempts to reunite all his souls under one horrifying umbrella. The tension is supposed to come from the fact that we don’t know which of the Riverton 7 is the bad soul claiming all the others. Sadly, there’s too many characters we just don’t know or see often enough to know or suspect. Don’t ask why there’s a blind kid tossed in there because there is seemingly no point. Although he can curiously sprint through the woods with little trouble, so there’s that.

There’s a nugget of a good, interesting story here but it’s lost. The pacing is terrible and you’ll be checking your watch at the midway point of the film. The 3D is certainly an afterthought and this method of sucking a few bucks more from your wallet is far more clever a device than anything in the film. It feels like there just isn’t enough story here to warrant an feature length film so they just stretched it out.

Because it’s Wes Craven there are certainly some good moments here and you can feel the master at work for brief minutes. But he’s off his game and diluted.

The best way to describe this movie for me would be this: You only have a little bit of very good, expensive bourbon left so you try to stretch it out with ice and water. You can barely taste how good it could have been if only you had a little more. That’s My Soul To Take. A tease.

I still believe in you Wes. I’ll see your next one but your running out of mulligans.