30) MY SOUL TO TAKE

Director: Wes Craven
Stars: Max Thieriot, John Magaro, Emily Meade, Zena Grey, Nick Lashaway, Paulina Olszynski, Denzel Whitaker, Jeremy Chu, Frank Grillo, Raul Esparza
Year: 2010
Rating: R

BIG Wes Craven fan here; have been for over twenty years. BIG fan of Max Thieriot, John Magaro, Frank Grillo, Raul Esparza and Jeremy Chu, as well ... and, thanks to this film, now want to catch more of Emily Meade and Zena Grey's work especially, as well.

Which made My Soul to Take all that much more disappointing - especially after a way-cool opening in which a handsome, very together husband and father named Abel (Raul Esparza) learns, on one dark and ugly night as his pregnant wife lies upstairs in bed, that he's a split personality - his other half being the Riverton Ripper, a serial killer terrorizing Riverton with a sharp hunting knife.

Things don't go so well from there, before the film flash forwards to sixteen years later ... and a riverside ceremony where the seventeen sixteen-year-old teenagers, all born on the night the Ripper was supposedly killed off, hold their annual ritual of pretending to kill off the Ripper again, keeping them safe another year (as the Ripper swore he'd come back and kill all seven of those born on the night he died).

Adam "Bug" Hellerman (Max Thieriot, a good actor who does the most he can with the material given) Heller, the one chosen to "kill off" the Ripper this time around, has been plagued by odd dreams and visions, and in total fear fails in his mission before the cops show to break things up. Sure enough, that night one of the seven is viciously murdered ... and it soon appears that the Ripper is back again, slicing and dicing his way through the unlucky seven. Question is, who IS the Ripper? Or, more importantly, who MIGHT BE the Ripper, as it may also be that the killer is dead - his soul actually now taking over one or maybe more of the ill-fated seven?

Sadly, you won't care too much about the answers to these questions by the end. Oh, the film has some nice, suspenseful moments, and interesting death scenes - thanks to Craven, who can be somewhat of a Jedi at it. And even the cast tries valiantly, Max Thieriot a worthwhile anchor as the confused, disturbed, and quite possibly homicidal apex of the group.

No, the script here is the letdown, by far. It seems too rushed, too much like a first draft put into production to beat a deadline. And then there's the ending; while the last, final "battle" scene starts off promisingly enough, it just goes on too long - until the suspense actually lags. I mean, you can only watch someone getting chased around a dark house for so long. And while the revelation of the killer is in itself a yawn, the ease with with said killer is dispatched - compared to the hellacious time they had getting the guy to lay down in the opening sequence, borders on both nonsensical and ridiculous.

Some moments - visually, artistically, and acting-wise - do shine in My Soul to Take, but they aren't enough to overcome a weak, cumbersome, even amateurish script that I'm having a hard time believing Craven even wrote. Or, if he did, that he took more than a weekend to write it. ** - Reel Mediocre