How’s this for a horror movie plot – a hack kidnaps a famous director and pretends to shoot a slasher movie under his name. The audiences unlucky enough to see the film collectively pray for a serial killer to enter the theater, knives at the ready.
It’s hard not to accept that wild scenario to explain “My Soul to Take,” written and directed by Wes Craven. Yes, it’s the same Craven who gave us Freddy Krueger, “The Hills Have Eyes” and the “Scream” franchise.
But “Soul” offers no scares, an incomprehensible story and more plot holes than imaginative kills. Not only does “Take” represent a stalled attempt at a new horror franchise, it marks a career nadir for one of the genre’s most dependable talents.
“Soul” begins with the Riverton Ripper, a serial killer with multiple personalities terrorizing a sleepy little hamlet. He meets his end in the film’s opening moments, even though he doesn’t go down quietly.
But is he really dead? Seven babies born on the night of the Ripper’s “death” may carry his dark legacy with them.
Flash forward 16 years, and the Ripper’s actions are the stuff of scary legend, repeated by the local teens in an annual ritual that doesn’t remind one of any typical teen gathering.
Shortly after the latest Ripperpalooza some of the unlucky seven start dying in gruesome fashion.
At times, “Soul” sinks to the level of camp, but it can’t stay there long enough for anyone’s satisfaction. The film’s shocks are pedestrian, the kills telegraphed a country mile away and the weapon of choice is – gasp – a hand knife. It isn’t your ordinary kitchen knife, though. It has the word, “vengeance,” engraved in it.
Scared yet?
The woeful dialogue veers between leaden exposition and gibberish, causing considerable harm to the careers of the pretty young cast mates. Consider this insta-classic – “Go back to hell where you came from – and I mean it!” says one of the Ripper’s prey.
Craven even uses a radio talk show host, heard clear as a bell in the background in one sequence, to shove his convoluted story along.
The story’s soapy underpinnings feel like outtakes from “Mean Girls” – “Soul” even trots out the exhausted slo-mo montage of hot chicks sauntering down the high school hallways. We even suffer through such stale tropes as the high school outcast in love with the unattainable girl and the jock who bullies those beneath his social strata.
That said, “My Soul to Keep” moves briskly and never lingers on any one overripe plot element long enough to drain us completely. That means we’ll tricked into enduring the never-ending, climax.
The Blu-ray extras include two alternate endings, an alternate opening, a commentary track by Craven and key cast members and a batch of deleted scenes.
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