6 Souls (2013)

Powerful

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties. It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

Shelter (6 Souls): Forensic Psychiatrist Cara Harding (Julianne Moore) doesn't believe in Multiple Personality Disorder but her father (Jeffrey Munn), also a psychiatrist, tries to shake up her thinking by introducing her to Adam (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) who is also David and Wesley. Apparently some of his physical abilities and characteristics change with his personalities.Not just a tale of a disturbed patient, this film also brings in serial killing, Appalachian Folk Magic and a curse. Good Folk Horror but with perhaps a few too many forced shocks. At 112 minutes it would have benefited from a 15 minutes cut in it's running time. Convincing acting by Moore and Meyers. 6.5/10.

I really liked this movie. Being as I stumbled upon it on Neflix and never heard of it at all, there was no level of expectation. I took it for what it was and this is my kind of movie.

This film held a lot of promise. Julianne Moore and Jonathan Rhys Meyers give compelling performances during the first hour. It is the story that goes off the rails. I believe that horror/possession films make an implied contract with the audience that they will understand the premise and reason for the story by the end. Instead, what begins as a great idea of multiple personalities, turns toward Appalachian magic, with no real explanation beyond telling us that around World War I, a preacher told the local folk to turn their faith from the local belief system and science and trust in him to protect them against an outbreak of influenza. He secretly has his children immunized. Flu vaccines were not available until 1938 courtesy of Jonas Salk. The locals murder him and his children, the local witch pulls his soul out of is body.So then we learn that the man with multiple personalities, is really the preacher, and that he is going around first cursing his victims to die from an influenza like cough, and a strange rash on their backs before stealing their souls by sucking them out of their bodies. The multiple personalities are then the stolen souls manifesting in the preacher's body. In no way does the film (edited for Television) explain how the preacher's body is still running around murdering people. Julianne Moore's character's reactions are flat when faced with her father's death, the death of her brother, and finally her daughter. By the end of the movie, we are supposed to be scared by the final scene (reminiscent of The Omen) but instead we are left wondering how did the story evolve into this thread, and feeling cheated and led on a wild goose chase for the last 112 minutes. The first part of the movie is so well done, it makes me want to find the script and then salvage the ending. Finally, the movie was originally released in the UK under the name "The Sheltering", but though the term is used in the second half of the movie associated with the soul-stealing, it is never really defined.

This is your typical ghost thriller. People start dying under strange circumstances, there is a main character who is somehow caught in the middle of this, obviously a woman, has a little child, who is also female, as well as other family connections and she is as representative as they could make her: Christian, middle class, white.However there are several problems that go beyond merely cliché. First of all there is the length, two full hours. Then there is the complete and utter lack of character development. Everyone, and I actually mean everyone, including the main character, are cardboard versions of human beings, robbed of any chance of turning into something else. Worse, as cardboard as they are, they are barely sketched. So that leaves the story: is it thrilling, scary or both? It is none of the above. It is slightly mysterious, I give it that, and the reason for it is that the writing is too confused to teach the viewer anything or let him at least understand what the hell is going on.The ending is the worst part, though, coming immediately after the "reveal", solving nothing and providing only the mandatory opportunity for a sequel. I have no idea why I got this film to watch in the first place, but I strongly recommend to not do the same.