The master of horror, Wes Craven, returns with this teen supernatural slasher flick and i saw it last night on blu-ray and thought i'd share my thoughts on it with you...
Right, after Karl's rambling on cinema from 1995 and it's Tarantino influences, im gonna look at what happened in the summer of 1996. A film that was supposed to redefine the 'slasher' genre came out and it did indeed change the way horror movies are made, it took the pop culture references of Tarantino and spliced them with the gore tastic thrills and spills of 80s slasher movies to create the post-modernist horror. Scream was it's name and just like Reservoir Dogs, it created a platform for filmmakers to roll out copy after copy after copy. The film was written by Kevin Williamson, who would go on to give us the fun I Know What You did Last Summer, the underated and franky fucking awesome Invasion of The Bodysnatcher lite, The Faculty, the rather tame and quite rubbish Helen Mirren thriller Teaching Mrs Tingle and motherfucking Dawson's Creek. So not all was bad, but it was the so-called return of Wes Craven that had a lot of people talking, Craven's last decent directorial effort was 1991's The People under the Stairs, don't get me wrong New Nightmare was an interesting piece of work but Vampire in Brooklyn was a massive disappointment. So when Scream came out, featuring a cast of well known TV actors and some younger new movers and shakers and scored big at the box office, The 'Slasher film was reborn.
What followed Scream was a renaissance, slasher's were coming at you left right and centre and they all starred a cast of young, good looking actors and actresses either in high school or collage with titles like Urban Legend, Valentine, Disturbing Behaviour, Soul Survivors and such, but because Scream was such a financial and critical hit it was followed by a sequel again directed by craven, then a Threequel. So when the post-modernist horror craze was sort of killed by the new millennial Zombie Uprising, Craven turned to mundane thrillers such as Red Eye and the ridiculous
Cursed, an extremely badly mad werewolf film with some seriously dodgy CGI. Gone was craven and teen slashers and hello to remake central.
With at least 3 of Craven's own films getting the remake make over, it was a pleasure to hear that the man himself was returning for a non remake horror, an original film entitled My Soul To Take.
The film is about a killer known as the Riverton Ripper who was killed 16 years ago and vowed to return from beyond the grave to kill the 7 children born on the night of his death, and so begins ripper day, and the killings. Each of the 7 are killed one by one until it's upto the rather slow son of the killer to stop him.
The plot has a sort of interesting idea in there somewhere but Craven fucks it up completely, sure it starts with an exciting prologue but ends with a 'fuck this shit' ending. The script is really badly written, there's something about a 60 something year old man writing about 16 year old kids that is quite...well fucked up if you ask me, his idea of kids in 2010 is the same as kids in 1996, times have changed Wes, 15 years since Scream. Not one of the characters in this film got any sort of sympathy from me because they were all douche fucks and I could give a great god damn if these little fuck tards got killed. Thats not how to write a film, Williamson had it down with scream, you cared if the characters lived or died, With My Soul To Take, ever single character deserved to get their fucking throats slit. Also how convenient that 7 kids were born in the same town on the same night, that shit never happens, unless it's the village of the fucking damned.
Then we have the Riverton Ripper, a man in a mask or a mouldy old maniac, who knows, how is he visible if he's using people as hosts for his spirit. Come on Wes, you gave us Krug, Freddy, Horrace Pinker and Ghost face but with the Ripper, it's as though you couldn't be arsed. The problem with the ripper is that he's not a well written villain, and although I wanted these kids to die anyway, I kinda wanted this pussy to die too, i'd like to see him go up against freddy, sort the men from the boys.
The major problem for me with this film was that it wasn't an original film what-so-ever, it seemed like Craven had gone back, watched his own movies and decided to take elements from each and string them together, there's some Nightmare in there, definitely a heavy dose of Shocker and the teen aspect of Scream. We've all seen these films before, we don't need to see them rehashed in a piece of shit like this.
Although i've bashed the fuck out of Craven's writing, his direction is top notch, the film looks great, the lighting is right and the angles tight, so fair dos to that but good direction does not make a good film unless you have a good script, which has always pissed me off especially with the oscars. How can a film be nominated for best film, best director but not be nom'd for best screenplay. Im not saying MSTT is in anyway an oscar contender because believe me it aint. But that's just my opinion in general concerning movies...
So I have to end this review and give my final verdict. My Soul To Take is a soulless, dumb, uneven, badly written excuse for a horror film and is quite frankly and embarrassment for Wes Craven, avoid the fuck out of this film and wait for Scream 4 to arrive, that is what we really want.
Wes, I love ya man, but don't write you're own stuff anymore, get someone younger and stop making films about kids, it's creepy dude, go Cronenberg and try something different.
MY SOUL TO TAKE:
FILM: 2/10
7 kids in 1 night in 1 town.....that's a quiet night in Merthyr mate!!
ReplyDeleteGreat review Ped, I shall avoid like the plague :)
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