My Soul to Take

In My Soul to Take, we are given a dire, drab, dull, boring, seen-it-all-before slasher horror that introduces nothing new, fresh or anything of any value to the quality-starved genre. What should have been a hooking tale of teenagers being offed by a buff, masked serial killer is anything but hooking, and is at many points a rather exhausting snooze-fest. It's shocking then that it's written and directed by the Scream trilogy's Wes Craven, who’s often considered a master of horror. Not after this though.

His newest project is one of the typical killer-comes-back-to-his-hometown-to-kill-some-kids horror, much like John Carpenter's magnificent Halloween or Craven's very own masterpiece, A Nightmare on Elm Street. Ah, those were the days. The killer in question is introduced in the clichéd somebody-gets-killed opening, with The Riverton Ripper (Raúl Esparza) - who suffers from multiple personalities - slaughtering his pregnant wife in his own home, taking out a few cops and paramedics before dying in an exploding ambulance. Or does he? I don't care; just make it end.

On this fateful night's 16th anniversary, the event is being celebrated by a bunch of obnoxious, stereotypical, insipid teens, seven of which just so happen to have been born on that murderous night. Spooky. Not. They discuss the rumour that the Riverton Ripper may still be alive, they conduct a ritual of stabbing a replica of the Riverton Ripper, they part their ways when the police come about, and one of them gets gutted and dumped in the river by the Riverton Ripper. Stupid kids.

And so, the rest of the movie consists of the annoying youths repeatedly kicking the blood-soaked bucket, running about, screaming, looking petrified and probably masturbating off-screen, all of which happens while we're yawning, rolling our tired eyes and wondering what the bloody hell Wes Craven was thinking.

My Soul to Take is a friggin' nightmare; and not the kind where Freddy Krueger jumps out from the wardrobe and has some mischievous fun with our poor, poor protagonists; no, those are entertaining. This is the kind of nightmare you wake up from in a confused, manic state, your clothes covered in sweat, your head thumping with rattling trauma, hoping to never go back in there and experience it again.

The movie is just ridiculous, scarred with monotonous jump-scares you can see from a god damn light-year away. People bumping into one another time and time again, people popping up behind moving doors, people seeing dead friends in cabinet mirrors. There's a scene where a guy runs about a classroom in a bird costume as part of a school talk, vomiting over a student, while our main character, Bug (Max Thieriot), talks in a booming, gruff voice. It's meant to be eerie. It's hilarious.

The cardboard cut-out cast doesn't stand a chance with Craven's laughable script. When a cop says "He's dead. Way dead", I'd had enough. And that was, what, five minutes into the film? Christ. The main character - y'know, the one we're meant to be rooting for - is a heavily distressed psycho who hallucinates and randomly talks in the voices of the local kids who share his birthday. Well, you'd be a little disturbed too if your nickname was Bug, right? And if you were in this movie.

His best bud is Alex (John Magaro), the practical joker and trouble-making wise-ass who, for the most part, is nothing but irritating. Every other adolescent is a death-teasing, forgettable stereotype desperately awaiting to be turned into a disembowelled cadaver. There's the jockish bully (Nick Lashaway), the bible-bashing weirdo (Zena Grey), the nerdy Asian (Jeremy Chu), the pretty blonde (Paulina Olszynski) and the, err, blind dude (Denzel Whitaker).

They're all underdeveloped, unsympathetic and uninteresting. They take part in tedious, shabby subplots that go absolutely nowhere, and Craven stupidly decides to give them some exasperating, pointless family dramas to deal with. So you'd think that them violently meeting their maker at the hands of the film's brutal killer would be satisfying. But it isn't.

The villain is a lame one, looking silly in dreadlocks, comically suffering from Tourette’s syndrome whenever he gets frustrated; much like me while watching this garbage. He cuts up the sixteen-year-olds with his "vengeance"-inscribed blade in mundane, plain ways from which the only redeeming factor is the high level of blood. Where are Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers when you need 'em? I'll even settle for Simon Cowell rather than this irksome dolt.

My Money to Steal? My Time to Waste? Wes Craven to Die? Okay, that last one's a bit extreme. But come on, man. What happened? My Soul to Take is nothing more than a pathetic retread of past slasher flicks that is in no way enjoyable or amusing. With Scream 4 on the way, I'm scared. Don't screw it up like you did this one, Wes. Please.

1/10