My Soul to Take (2010)

Admirable film.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

RELEASED IN 2010 and directed/written by Wes Craven, "My Soul to Take" is a slasher movie about the high schoolers of Riverton, Connecticut, and the legend that a schizophrenic serial killer will return to murder the teens born the day he died 16 years earlier. It's not clear if the killer actually died (his body was never found, dun, dun, dun) or if his soul will possess one or more of the kids in order to conduct his wicked deeds.I wasn't aware that this was a Wes Craven production while watching (I must've missed it in the opening credits), but the unrealistic tone and general dramatics reminded me of Craven's "Scream" (1996), albeit without the humor. So I wasn't surprised when the end credits revealed this was Wes' baby.I liked how Wes used actors who actually looked like teens and, in some cases, were teens during filming, like Paulina Olszynski, who was not quite 18 playing 16 year-old Brittany, and Emily Meade, who was 20 playing 19 year-old Fang.Zena Grey is on hand as a fundamentalist Christian, Penelope. Unfortunately, as is typical for Craven, Penelope's religiosity is so overdone I busted out laughing at a couple of her melodramatic statements. Memo to Craven: Actual staunch believers rarely talk in that heavy-handed manner to other people, particularly high schoolers, who simply aren't that overt & bold about their Christianity.In any case, the condor-charade-in-the-classroom sequence perked my attention because it was so quirky and compelling. There are some interesting ideas in the script (e.g. the soul of someone who dies passing into someone being born) and I appreciated that this isn't just a slasher flick, but also a coming-of-age high school movie. Max Thieriot & John Magaro emerge as the protagonists (or maybe antagonists), Bug and Alex, and they're competent, but I had trouble getting into the dramatics of the characters. Nothing seemed real; it felt like the Twilight Zone. I suppose it didn't help that some of the story elements are a bit convoluted. It also didn't help that the females, while more than serviceable, lacked sex appeal IMHO.Craven is renowned in horror circles, but he's had his share of clunkers (e.g. 1988's "The Serpent and the Rainbow"). "My Soul to Take" falls somewhere in the middle.THE MOVIE RUNS 108 minutes and was shot in Connecticut (New Milford, Danbury & Tolland).GRADE: C+

I have seen a lot of horror films in my time. And to be honest? This film doesn't stray far most others in this particular genre. It has very generic characters, There is the jock, the beautiful girl and the loser. It also keeps up the slasher tradition of a bunch of teenagers getting picked off one by one. Was this film any different from other slashers? Not really. The acting was okay, Max Thieriot as Bug was quite good. The other seven were adequate. However, Emily Meade as Fang put in a rather poor performance. She showed next to no emotion in scenes that were meant to be quite deep. A big issue for me was the murderer himself, The "Riverton Ripper". We never properly see his mask up close, so we never get a true sense of terror that comes purely from what the killer looked like ( Ghostface in Wes Cravens scream series was a great example of a murderer that delivers scares purely based on appearance ).The one thing that saves this film from being a mere 3/4 out of 10 is the idea behind the plot. Okay, sure it could have been edited a little better but the idea of the souls of a serial killers victims travelling into the children born on the night he died was good. Then there was the murders, if you enjoy gore then you probably won't find much of it here. Out of all the murders, the second murder of Penelope was the only gory one as we can see the blood pouring out of her throat.You may as well go rent this movie, it's definitely not going to be the best film you've ever seen but I guarantee that it won't be a film to throw away after 10 minutes of watching .Overall rating : 6/10

It's inevitable with some veteran filmmakers that they'll have their share of hits and misses. Chalk this one up as a miss for horror master Wes Craven; while it's not without some good moments and assets, there's a decided lack of suspense, a poor script (surprising, coming from Craven), mostly inane characters, failed attempts at humour, and a lame killer.Too bad, because the set-up had some potential: a psychopath (Raul Esparza) with multiple personalities is caught by the cops, but in a ridiculous series of events, ends up vanishing, never to be seen again. On this same night, seven babies are born in the local hospital. Cut to 16 years later, and these now teen aged kids begin to be stalked and slaughtered by some unknown entity. Could it be the killer from long ago?Dialogue and situations are often too silly to be believed, including a scene with two students staging a dramatic presentation on condors for their biology class. The movie is much too chaotic to start with, with things happening much too quickly; there's no sense of a build. While it can't be said that there's no atmosphere at all (those shots of the bridge are pretty damn spooky), Craven fails to make this derivative material scary in any way. Much too much about the film is utterly generic.The young cast does what it can with their roles. Max Thieriot is our oddly named, sensitive hero "Bug", a dude who takes a hell of a lot of punishment before the film is over. John Magaro is his good buddy Alex. Nick Lashaway plays the obligatory bullying jock Brandon. Zena Grey has a more interesting part than the rest of them as the serious minded, religious Penelope. Emily Meade plays a bitchy character absurdly dubbed "Fang". Veterans in the cast include Jessica Hecht as May, Harris Yulin as Dr. Blake, and Dennis Boutsikaris as the principal.One definitely expects more from a filmmaker of Cravens' caliber. Hell, even "The Hills Have Eyes Part II" was more amusing than this. It doesn't come recommended, but completists may still want to see it for curiosity's sake.Three out of 10.

I avoided this movie when it came to theaters, and decided to watch it tonight. I've heard it was bad, but I decided to check it out anyway since I still have respect for Wes Craven as filmmaker. In fact, I think his directing skills are very good, it's just that he either works with horrible script or tries too much to please the audiences. and "My Soul to Take" is no exception. It's probably the worst Craven movie to this day. Plot is basically the same as Elm Street 2, and that's interesting - Wes Craven borrowing heavily from a sequel to one of his movies, but MSTT suffers from trying to hard to be too smart and complex, instead of being a simple straight-forward slasher film. Characters are horrible, non of them are likable. They are either over- the-top stereotypes, or just boring. I really have no problem with stereotypical characters if they are interesting and done in witty way (several movies did that), but characters in MSTT had some of the worst mindblowing bad dialogues. You can do a really good drinking game, taking one shot each time one of the characters said dumber line then his preview one, or something stupid happens in the movie. This is what happens when man in his 60 tries to write a movie about teens in their 16. Also, there's a huge problem where one of the scenes does the whole exposition for the entire movie and what's going on. It felt too forced and exposition didn't came naturally. The villain is not very interesting, nor is he very intimidating like Craven's preview villains (Gang from HHE, Freddy or even Ghostface). You remember Coolio? Now imagine that Coolio is a movie character, made on Youtube movie quality with his face painted in white. There you have, Wes Craven's Ripper. His one liners are ridiculous (aren't those outdated anyway???) and he is arguably one of the dumbest slashers in history of slasher movies. Now, movie tries to be cute sometimes, but that's another thing.On the positive side: It's actually well directed. Craven still knows how to lead the story with his visuals and lure into false sense of security. It had one or two moments, but good direction didn't help to save horrible screenplay. There are few jump scares but they aren't overused and they never become annoyance (they also don't explode with loud musical orchestra in the background). Also, this movie has similar frames to the Craven's '80s movies, which I found rather interesting. Cinematography is still modern, but camera angles and composition looks like a movie made in late '80s-early-mid '90s. There's also "The Curse of the Wes Craven" moment here, which plagues this director from the beginning of his career - he doesn't know how to end movie properly.Soundtrack is forgettable.Note: There's only one funny scene where two lead characters do presentation of California Condor at their class. It's unnecessary scene and doesn't advance the plot in any way, but it's kinda funny and weird. It also feels like a random scene that's taken from some other movie and edited by mistake, which makes it even funnier. Overall, it's bad, it's pretty bad, probably one of the Craven's worst. Even worse then Scream 4, and that says a lot.