My Soul to Take Review

Julian's Rating: 2/10 Player Affinity Composite Rating: 1.6/10 (3 ratings total) Filled with embarrassingly obvious tangents, plot holes, and low quality 3-D effects, Wes Craven’s latest flick, My Soul to Take, is a muddled and terribly paced failure to thrill or even entertain. In fact, it might just be the most poorly crafted film of the year. The film takes place in the town of Riverton, where seven teens were all born at midnight on the same night. This night just happens to be the same night that a famous murderer dubbed the Riverton Ripper died. On the 16th birthday of these teens, particularly strange things begin to happen to Bug (Max Thieriot), the teen in the group who is generally perceived to be eccentric. As the day unfolds, he begins to discover things about the Riverton Ripper … and about himself. My Soul to Take is not a good horror film. There is true terror, however, in how terrible it is. Although most of the performances hold up well enough to carry the paper-thin story, one must wonder what happened to the man who paved the way for Drew Barrymore and Neve Campbell to give such iconic performances in Scream. On a more positive note, Emily Meade shows promise as the defiant and oddly named Fang, but the script simply never allows the character to go to the next level. The rest of the character development isn’t much better, as the writing simply sets the principle characters up with personal problems that are never explored beyond their surface. It is difficult to put a decent amount character development into a film that more or less spans a 24-hour time period, but this just doesn’t cut it. Not in the slightest. The plot progression in the film frequently changes, both in tone and in pace. The tone ranges from typical teen movie fare (minus any kind of charm, of course) to the worst clichés of what is generally considered the modern horror film. The pace of the film drifts from slow and meandering to frenetic. In the end, though, said plot progression is more about bloody deaths and jump scares (only one of which works to any effect) than anything actually resembling a plot. That’s not fair to say, though. There is a plot in the film, but it struggles to find true coherency. Without giving away anything that might ruin the experience if one decides to see the film, the motives of certain characters are curiously nonsensical and induce lots of head-scratching. My Soul to Take had the potential to be a fascinating mixture of character-driven drama and chill-inducing horror. Unfortunately, the film settles to be a run-of-the-mill shock fest devoid of any true thrills whatsoever. It might be remembered in years to come as an unintentional comedy. If such a thing does happen, at least something good will have come from this film. Rating: 2/10 My Soul to Take Directed by Wes Craven Written by Wes Craven Starring: Max Thieriot, John Magaro, Emily Meade  Other Player Affinity Reviews Simon thought: "The lowest ilk of horror movies often succumb to similar pitfalls: stock scares, cheap, audience-deceiving twists and any number of clichéd fright flick tropes. Throw in 3D and an incomprehensible narrative and you may have some basic idea of what this abomination of a film has to (or rather what it doesn’t have to) offer. As I sat both perplexed and utterly bored at the events transpiring on screen (thanks to the multiple personality, flashback-ridden script) I had to wonder how a man who had directed A Nightmare on Elm Street could have fallen so far as to assemble such drivel. I warn anyone who thinks this looks like a throwback slasher flick from an old master to stay an arms length away, as the only thing My Soul to Take effectively snatches is 90 minutes of your time." Rating: 2/10  Dinah's Rating: 1/10 Player Affinity Composite Rating: 1.6/10