I can't say I've ever been a huge fan of horror movies. There are some horror films, like The Shining, that I do enjoy. However, I've never really been a fan of your basic teen slasher film that follows the formula so expertly skewered in the Scream franchise. The less I say about the whole torture porn subgenre, the better. But then there's Wes Craven. I've always thought Craven was a unique vision in horror films. On the surface, his films play like your basic formulaic slasher film. But, especially in his earlier films, there is something going on beyond the surface. The first Nightmare on Elm Street played with notions of reality and dreamworld. The Scream movies, as I've mentioned, turned genre conventions on their ear. I've even given some praise to Vampire in Brooklyn. I always thought it was an interesting twist on the vampire tale. One film that both scared the crap out of me and amazed me was New Nightmare. Craven goes all meta, with original Elm Street scream queen Heather Langenkamp playing herself, being terrorized by a real-world incarnation of Freddy Krueger. His more recent films have been a little lackluster, but I was still looking forward to (well, warily looking forward to) My Soul To Take, his latest effort. It's also the first film he's made that he also wrote since New Nightmare. Unfortunately, My Soul to Take is fairly run-of-the-mill in terms of its story and surprisingly tame as a horror film. Like his other films, My Soul to Take seems like a by-the-numbers slasher film with some supernatural elements thrown in. Seven children are born on the day a local serial killer is killed. "The Ripper" as he is called by media had killed seven people. We find out the Ripper is a mild-mannered family man who happens to suffer from schizophrenia. He doesn't remember his murderous rampages. When he tries to kill himself, the murderous Ripper takes over. Carnage ensues. Skip forward 16 years. The Ripper returns and begins killing the now-teenaged children one by one. The idea is that the seven original victim's souls found refuge in the seven babies. The Ripper's soul is believe to have taken refuge in one of the babies as well. The seven teenagers are straight out of the stock high school character yearbook. There's the oversexed jock Brandon (Nick Lashaway), the pretty girl Brittany (Paulina Olszyinski), the strange religious girl Penelope (Zena Grey), the geeky Alex (John Magaro), token black (and blind!) kid Jerome (Denzel Whitaker) and the token Asian Jay (Jeremy Chu). Then there's the meek Bug (Max Thieriot), who has suffered from horrible nightmare and migraine headaches since he was a child. He's the weirdo of the group and wow, does Craven ever pound on that particular nail. The story does make some attempts to connect the events going on with Native American and Haitian spiritualism, but does it in a totally conflicting way. The true identity of the killer is telegraphed very early on, taking a lot of the thrill out of the film. Also, if people were offended by my labeling the two minority characters as token, keep in mind that Mr. Chu is in the film for just a little over five minutes before he is shuffled off the mortal coil. Mr. Whitaker fare a little better. He makes it to the final reel. Here's the thing, he is not at all the part of the story. He shows up from time to time to scare the bullies away from Bug, but other than that, HE'S NOT IN THE MOVIE AT ALL. Max Thieriot is adequate as Bug, the character the movie centres around. Bug is troubled and as the other teens die, he begins to absorb their souls. At least, I think that is what we're supposed to believe. Bug starts acting all twitchy and repeats things the others said to him before he died, usually with some sort of affectation to his voice. In any case, it's very unclear. The movie has been the 3D conversion treatment. I don't know why. Nothing comes off the screen and everything looks dark. Aside from a means for the studio to jack up the weekend gross due to the premium for 3D films, I can't imagine why they did it with this movie. One thing about the movie that I did think effective was the knife used by The Ripper. When I first saw it, I immediately thought of Freddy Krueger's razor glove. It looked mean and nasty and very painful. That, at least, gave me a little shudder.
Review of My Soul to Take
