My Soul to Take is horror master Wes Craven’s long-awaited return to the genre he practically defined in A Nightmare on Elm Street and then redefined in Scream. If only he had screened each of those before heading back to the drawing board for this convoluted, anti-climactic comeback. If even he seems bored with it, expect that you will be too.
It starts off promisingly enough. Abel Plankoff (Raul Esparza) is a mild-mannered dad working on a dollhouse and rocking horse for his three-year-old daughter and unborn son when he discovers a bloody knife. It’s the same one that’s been on the news as the tool of small-town serial killer, The Riverton Ripper. He suddenly realizes that among the multiple personalities he thought he had in check is one extremely terrifying one. In these twisty-turny, jump-out-of-your-seat scary opening minutes, Abel attacks his (kind of creepy in her own right) daughter, slays his preggo wife, and appears to kick the bucket himself. There’s talk of voodoo and body-jumping souls. And then there are seven simultaneous premature births, including a blind baby and Abel’s own miracle baby, one of whom might contain the evil spirit of The Ripper.
Craven was always good at openings.
Then, all that pop-bang excitement begins to fizzle when the story jumps forward 16 years to the anniversary of that night and the birthday of the Riverton Seven. These teenagers, all tropes from every high school-set movie you’ve ever seen, couldn’t be more different. There’s the sex-obsessed jock, Brandon (Nick Lashaway); the pretty blonde, Brittany (Paulina Olszynski); the blind kid, Jerome (Denzel Whittaker); the Asian kid, Jay (Jeremy Chu); the Jesus freak, Penelope (Zena Grey); the class clown, Alex (John Magaro); and the weirdo, Bug (Max Thierot). After all, from Scream to I Know What You Did Last Summer to Final Destination, this kind of character shorthand is the bread-and-butter of the teen-slasher pic.
In My Soul to Take, though, the shorthand stops there. There are hints at a romantic quadrangle between Brandon and Bug, who are both hot for Brittany, and Penelope, whose bible study doesn’t keep her from crushing on Bug. But there’s no fulfillment, for the audience or the characters. Writer-director Craven (wearing both hats for the first time since 1994’s A New Nightmare) begins to kill off all seven before we even get a chance to know them.
It’s obvious to anyone who has ever seen one of these movies that Brandon and Brittany are lost-cause characters (duh, the cheerleader and the quarterback are always early goners) but Bug, Penelope, and a bad-ass mean girl who runs the school named Fang (Emily Meade) actually show promise. All three actors try really hard–bless their Disney Channel hearts–but there’s only so much they can do. I feel most sorry for Magaro, who was essentially cast as Vinnie Delpino, Doogie Howser’s window-climbing bestie.
To make matters worse, Craven doesn’t even kill his darlings well. Remember Rose McGowan being sucked up into the garage door opener in Scream and her well formed legs swaying helplessly in the night? Or that iconic knife-gloved hand reaching up between Heather Langenkamp’s thighs in her bathtub? Me too.
This movie includes neither a particularly scary bad guy nor one memorable death scene. In fact, the reborn Riverton Ripper (who looks like a cross between the WWE’s Undertaker circa 1992 and John Travolta’s dreadlocked alien in Battlefield Earth) doesn’t even have a clear methodology. He brains one kid and slashes the throats of a couple of others. The blood doesn’t spurt or spew. It dribbles. There’s no hilarity, no sexual tension, no poetry. Give or take a pop culture wisecrack, there’s no sign of Craven, really.
Look, I am a Wes Craven fan. I think of him as the John Hughes of the horror genre. When he is playing at the top of his game, he really gets it. His monsters are almost as ugly and bloody as high school was. Still, no one is infallible. John Hughes had Flubber. Wes Craven has My Soul to Take.
There’s also the issue of the needless 3D retrofit. I’ve railed against the medium before, I know. But My Soul to Take is the most the blatant example to date of why this medium is just a money-grubbing studio ploy. The 3D isn’t intrusive or excessive. It is nonexistent. It doesn’t even get falling rain right and that’s the most hackneyed 3D trick of all.
They should have called it My Extra Four Bucks to Take.