My Soul to Take (2010)

Directed by: Wes Craven
Cast: Max Thieriot, John Magaro, Emily Meade,

Plot: The same night the Riverton Ripper is killer, his soul goes into seven newborn children. Years later someone is killing off these kids one by one. Is the Riverton Ripper back, or is it one of the seven kids. Is Wes Craven back from the grave with a new opus? Sadly no...

Review:
I weep tonight for Wes Craven. He was once a great horror aficionado who was making great films. A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET and SCREAM are two of my favorite films. I believe A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (1984) to be a literal masterpiece and is the best film to come out of the 80s. Sadly somewhere over time he disappeared and when he was tackling MY SOUL TO TAKE, I was stoked. Wes Craven doing another slasher flick – COUNT ME IN!!! Then…the trailer hit. I was underwhelmed…and then the reviews came in and my heart was breaking. But I was still going to give it a chance. I don’t always agree with the masses (example: Rob Zombie’s Halloween II). A while back I got my hands on the script and to say it was mediocre would be an understatement. It was absolute shit. I finally got the nerve to watch the film tonight (most of it) and…every opinion I had of the script is the same for the finished picture. Let’s dissect Craven’s newest film; I guess if you want to call it that – a film.
Where do I begin? The terribly written characters, the dumb ass dialogue, the ridiculous situations…We’ll start with the characters. These have to be some of the blandest and most boring characters I’ve seen in a slasher film in a long time. They didn’t interest me or evoke any sympathy from me. Hell, they didn’t even make me hate them enough to want them to die. I just didn’t care. Strike one for this film. I didn’t care about one person in this film. At times this film even felt like a parody of a slasher flick as opposed to an actual slasher flick. We have our young hero of Bug, who is so inconsistent it is ridiculous. Everything about him just made no sense. Why did he behave like such a child? At one point when his friend curses he states that he said a bad word and towards the end…he gets the shit beaten out of him by his Goth sister! How am I supposed to root for this guy? This is our lame hero! He acts like a damn two year old. Then his sister is such a bitch to the point where she got annoying, but she gets some points (and I stress some) for being the most interesting character. Her past was actually kind of intriguing and I would like to have seen more of that. But that isn’t much, because she still was lacking a personality, which seems to be a trait of everyone in this town. Personality must be outlawed in Riverton.
Then we have the inane scenes, which were so stupid that they came out of nowhere and made absolutely no sense. The scene where Bug mimics his friend down to the every move: what was that about exactly? It came out of nowhere, added nothing to the plot, and the film never explained this…again…what? They kept adding dumb scenes like this to make us think Bug is the killer, but these scenes made no sense and dumbed down the film even more so, and I thought that was an impossible task because this film was pretty dumb to begin with. Then we have the ATROCIOUS dialogue. The things these kids say are horrible! It felt like it was written by an old man pretending to be a kid when he doesn’t know how a kid speaks…oh wait! Now it all makes sense, because that IS what went down. Next time Wes Craven, have someone write your dialogue. I’ve never heard any teenager speak like any of the kids in this film and you can trust me because I am only twenty. So I was a teenager only a few months ago.
On a technical level this film didn’t fare much better. Wes Craven is a great director with a great eye, but this film felt flat to me. I didn’t notice any style whatsoever. If you told me Craven directed this, I would not have believed you! The score was forgettable – legit I already forgot it and the soundtrack was forgettable as well. It was just your basic pop/rock songs that every teen film has.
And is it just I, but for an R-rated slasher film, it felt very PG-13 to me. Yeah the stabbings were slightly bloody…but they weren’t that bad at all. This film just felt like a PG-13 film with some curse words involved. If they got rid of the cursing, I guarantee this would have gotten that dreaded PG-13 rating. The kills were boring anyway. It was the same each time. Everyone was pretty much stabbed in the stomach or back. Not one death scene was interesting. The chase scenes were boring and let me talk about the killer a bit. He looked ridiculous, he was not scary, and the fact he could disappear/reappear makes no sense, when you see the twist ending. Oh and he says fuckin’ Boo!
The film’s ending also made no sense to me, and if I actually sat down to think about this film (which I don’t plan to do more of), I am positive I could find so many plot holes, I could drive the Titanic AND the iceberg that sunk the Titanic through the plot hole.
You must be asking yourself: “Do I have anything good to say about this?” Yes, I found some stuff to like. I actually like the initial plot of the film – a killer is killed the same night seven babies are born and his seven personalities go into each child, and one child may get his killer personality. I like the idea of that. It’s interesting and unique, but the film didn’t elaborate on this. Instead, it felt like A Nightmare on Scream Street. If you put those two films into a blender…it would shit out this film. I digress; I’m here to talk about the good now, well the little good that there is. The opening scene was interesting and actually had some style and it was a nifty and entertaining scene. It wasn’t particularly scary, but it actually had style and Abel was a creepy guy. The character of Fang (seriously what is with these names?! Bug and Fang?) has an interesting past, and I wish that was elaborated on more…and I will give the film this. The actors weren’t terrible. They were boring, but I felt like that was more the fault of the script and I could see some talent in a few of the actors, if they had a better script that is. The acting was decent, and I did like that the teenagers looked like actual teenagers. No college age kids or thirty-year-olds were casted in this film. Real teens were casted. That was a nice idea. And last but not least, the film was so bad, I couldn’t help but laugh AT it. Again, the scene where Fang beats up Bug – FUNNY stuff.
If you can’t tell I hated this movie, then you must be on drugs. I have not been so disappointed in a film in a long time. I was hoping for this to be Wes Craven’s comeback…but instead I got shit. I lost more hope (of the little I had) for SCREAM 4…God help us all…

Grade: 3/10