My Soul to Take Reviews

Since the ratings were pretty low, I wasn’t expecting much from this flick but since Wes Craven is an interesting director, I still wanted to check it out. Eventually, it was indeed pretty disappointing. Apparently, it seems that Craven wanted here to recreate the same success he had with the ‘Scream’ franchise. Indeed, it centers on a group of young people in high school getting killed one by one and the ending was supposed to provide a ‘clever’ twist. Unfortunately, about everything that was good in ‘Scream’ went wrong here… It started here with a messy and very lame introduction and I wondered how they would manage to recover from this. Actually, they should have removed the intro completely or set it later in the movie. Anyway, it got a little bit better when you got to learn the 7 of Riverton but it was still pretty damned average. Above all, I thought it was just really poorly written and I had a hard time remembering who was who and who was doing what. At the end, you get, of course, a twist but whereas it was pretty cool in ‘Scream’, here, it was far from being convincing at all. At the end of the day, it is obviously one of the worst movies made by Wes Craven, along ‘Cursed’ and ‘A vampire in Brooklyn’. To conclude, I’m being really generous with my rating, it is and remains a very average slasher flick and it is not really worth a look, even if you like the genre.

Not only was Wes Craven the director, he was also the writer, and this is shocking, because this movie is just not good. Definitely not good enough to be something from the mind of Wes Craven, who I love. I sat through this movie in theatre, in 3D, and what a waste of money. Yes, I thought it was okay, but it was totally predictable, and then the more I thought about it after walking away from the friend I saw it with (who has terrible taste and loved it), I realized, I didn't like it and regretted paying money to see it.

The movie plods along until a wholly predictable conclusion. It isn't scary, it's not interesting, it's just a mish-mash of stuff that has been done and seen more than once before, and includes a bunch of unknown young actors who I don't care for, as they all appear to be totally lacking any acting talent.

Might not be their fault, entirely, given that the script was just terrible, but still...I think it's just an overall combination of bad from every possible corner that makes this movie flop. And it's not even one of those, this is so bad it's good movies. It's just bad and shouldn't exist, shouldn't be seen.

"I am the condor. The Keeper of the Souls. I eat death for breakfast. I live in a house of blood and I accept that. That's all a man can do. I was ready to be arrested that night. I wasn't ready for what happened instead."

My Soul to Take is an utterly bewildering film to experience. And the fact that horror maestro Wes Craven both wrote and directed this hogwash makes it even more head-scratching. Craven must have been pulling an elaborate hoax by making this seriously awful film - he is so far above the material that he must be joking or at least committing an act of cinematic trolling. The premise - a half-hearted mixture of Scream and Nightmare on Elm Street - is ridiculously abstract, and it comes to life with stilted dialogue and awful screenwriting. Trying to explain precisely why the script is so bad is a foolhardy task because recognising the flaws requires one to understand everything happening in the story. Frankly, I cannot make heads or tails of it - and I doubt that any of the actors or even Craven himself could explain it.

As the film opens, a notorious serial killer known as the Riverton Ripper is killed by police, revealing a supernatural presence that continues to live on despite an ostensibly deceased physical body. And on the night of the Ripper's supposed death, seven babies were simultaneously born at the local hospital. The story then fast-forwards to the 16th anniversary of the events; the Ripper's body is still undiscovered, and the seven kids born on the night - known as the Riverton Seven - are well aware of the bizarre events surrounding their births. The anniversary is an evening of tradition for the Riverton Seven, who gather yearly to commemorate the end of the Ripper's deadly reign. However, it appears that the Ripper has returned this year and that his malevolent soul may be living on inside one of the Riverton Seven.

Despite its clichéd nature, My Soul to Take's opening sequence is passable, instilling at least a vague sense that a decent film may be taking shape. But from that point on, the flick takes a massive nose-dive, spiralling out of control to such an extent that it's hard to figure out what the fuck is happening, let alone why. None of the characters make any sense or seem real in any way, scenes drag on and on to the point of tedium, and the dialogue (which sounds like Craven was trying to imitate Kevin Williamson) is horrible. Furthermore, My Soul to Take is not thrilling, funny or even engaging due to unbelievably lousy storytelling. It doesn't help that the story itself is a complete mess. The tone, meanwhile, is all over the map, with what appears to be ineffective humour popping up amidst ineffective horror. The result is 100 minutes of awkward, disjointed, agonising monotony that's not worth sitting through, even as a dare.

The only thing close to terrifying about My Soul to Take is that it was Wes Craven's return to the horror scene after a five-year hiatus. How can the director of Scream and A Nightmare on Elm Street beget such a talentless addition to the same genre that he helped build? In fact, there's not a single scare or creative kill in My Soul to Take at all - the kills are Syfy Channel lame, while some kills even happen off-screen. Making matters worse is the obvious use of CGI blood, which looks monumentally awful and lessens the visceral impact of the murders. Adding insult to injury, Craven seems to channel his own Scream for no reason at all, with the killer calling the teenagers on their cell phones to taunt them just before murdering them (apparently the voice of Scream's Ghostface, Roger Jackson, also voices the killer here). In context, the phone taunting makes no sense - did Craven just include this malarkey in an attempt to be funny and self-referential? If so, he failed. And if he did it because he genuinely thought it would be thrilling? Fail on omega levels.

After an interminable series of thrill-less murders, stiff dialogue and painful scenes of so-called acting, the proceedings come to a head for the exhaustively stupid climax that is prolonged to agony. It's hard to figure out exactly what the fuck Craven was aiming for with the climax - it's completely devoid of tension and thus merely amounts to a few bad actors spurting bad lines of dialogue. Speaking of the actors, they are all terrible - not only do they look too old to be high school kids, but their acting is so forced that it feels like we're watching a low-rent high school play. Zena Grey is a notable offender. Sure, Grey is pleasant to look at, but her religious zealot act is cringe-worthy due to its over-the-top awfulness.

Wes Craven must share the Riverton Ripper's condition of having multiple souls rattling around inside his physical form. The real Craven is a master of horror, but the alternative soul inside of Craven begets nonsense like My Soul to Take. It's impossible to overstate just how abysmal this film is - scenes are haphazardly assembled without any sense of pacing, and all of the talk of souls and soul guardians (i.e. the stuff supporting the central premise) merely leads to a lot of "What the fuck?" moments. Absolutely nothing works here. If this was a student film, My Soul to Take would still be unwatchable. But with Craven having written and directed it, the film is a crime against cinema.

0.5/10

I usually hate horror movies, but this was an exception for me. I dont know why but the character pf Bug was just awesome. Im not sure why everyone hated it so much. its definatly worth watching.

With a very interesting theme, developed till a part of the film correctly, but almost vanished at the end. Bug is an extremely cute guy, whose gives you the idea of the most innocent person in the world and that further ahead if it makes us rethink is so innocent. The main idea is quite different, multiple souls instead of multiple personalities with a touch of mystical and supernatural to spice up the story had everything to be perfect, but with the progress the plot began to seem too predictable and almost half of the film, as gives notice to the entire plot of intrigue, which makes them lose all the suspense and grace of figure that out in the end. In short, it's a good movie, could have been better if directed it better, really disappointed with Wes Craven.

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep;
if I die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.

Once again, it's so bad it's good! "Fly now".