My Soul to Take (2010)

Directed by: Wes Craven
Written by: Wes Craven
Cast: Max Thieriot, John Magaro, Denzel Whitaker, Zena Grey, Nick Lashaway, Paulina Olszynski, Jeremy Chu, Emily Meade, Raúl Esparza

We really have had it all wrong about schizophrenia. Wes Craven has revealed within My Soul to Take a brand new working theory of schizophrenia that is bound to turn stupid old science on its head. It's not about misfiring neurons, chemical imbalances, childhood trauma, or anything silly like that; schizophrenics are simply people who have become jam packed with extra human souls. Most people just have one soul, and schizophrenics can have two, three, or even seven souls. The world is made clear. Take that, science!

It's been sixteen years since the fall of the dreaded 'Riverton Ripper'. On his last fateful night, he was gunned down in the height of a murder spree, only to spring to life in the back of an ambulance on the way to the hospital. The medical staff is, of course, poorly equipped to handle a psychopathic maniac, and so the entire thing crashes and blows up, Ripper and all.

Being a sufferer of schizophrenia, his death releases seven souls to the magical soul ether, free and able to jump into brand new bodies to start the magical cycle of life all over again. One of these souls is, of course, really nasty; a mean murdering soul who only wants to live to kill. The other six are okay, if a little bland and boring at parties. Now, you might not know this about souls but, they never travel far - all seven freed souls jump into newborns that were being grunted out in the small town of Riverton that very same night.

All seven of those babies grew up into a diverse selection of young people, to include The Jock, The Nice Cute Girl, The Christian Girl, The Geek, The Geek's Best Friend, The Black Guy, and The Whacky Asian Kid. One of them - and it's a big mystery who - is a vessel for the really nasty murderous soul. On their 16th birthday, the bad soul has decided to perform a reunion of sorts, and sets out to kill off all six of the other goody two-shoe non-murdering souls.

All of the characters and their introductions are hammed out in the first fifteen minutes with a style of exposition that's about as subtle as a roll call. All seven kids meet, along with other nameless youth of the town, every year on their birthdays at the river side location where the Ripper had blown up in the ambulance. We know it's the exact spot, because the ambulance is still there; yes, the city decided to never, ever remove it, presumably so that kids would have a rusty old husk to smoke pot in.

The Jock (and we know he's a jock because he always wears a 'Varsity' jacket and is mean to geeks) hosts the little ritual by introducing every single character we're going to meet - their names as well as their stereotypes. Then some jackass stumbles out dressed like Gregory Rasputin, and one of the Riverton Seven is supposed to drive him back into the river, to dwell there for another year. This year, it's The Geek's turn. However, it all goes wrong when the cops break it up before The Geek can summon up the guts to dispel the puppet demon, which of course means they're all going to die. Good going, Geek.

I didn't like My Soul to Take. Rarely is a film so thoroughly bad in so many ways. The mythology behind it is one of the most nonsensical lumps of rambling horseshit ever to be put to film. Schizophrenia is now multiple-soul-disorder? This is the sort of garbage meth addicts scribble about when they're taking a break from making bird cages from rusty wire hangers. It is just a childishly stupid notion that is an outright mockery of any semi-intelligent idea about the nature of schizophrenia. You might as well make a film that suggests AIDS is due to the work of microscopic aliens building a chain of used VHS stores in a victim's rectum.

This grade school conception of how-life-works continues with the supposed propagation of the souls into brand new bodies. As mentioned, the souls (for whatever reason) don't fall far from the tree and all take up residence in nearby newborns. This, of course, answers the entire question on when life begins. Babies don't have souls until they actually leave the womb. Before then, they are just soulless lumps of crap. I guess that settles the entire abortion issue, once and for all, and no one will mind anymore when I suggest a rousing game of 'Fetus Football'.

The extremely childish nature of the film bleeds into the murderer itself. The Geek fails to complete the inane ritual of driving the caricature of the Ripper back into the river, and soon enough his friends start dying for real. The monster is reborn, looking just as Rasputin-y as the fake puppet. My Soul to Take wants to make sure that you know this is The Ripper, and not just some angry Russian hobo, so, in the first scene where he cuts down The Whacky Asian kid, he actually says his name as a sort of battle cry. He charges down the bridge shouting, "RIPPPPPPPPERRRRRRRRRRRRRR!" with all the menace of an 8-year-old pretending to be his favorite professional wrestler.

Why don't all of our iconic villains do this? Show some brand name pride! Picture Hellraiser's 'Pinhead' shouting 'PINNNHEAAAAAD' in a menacing tone as he lurches out of the shadows. Ooooo, scary. Then imagine how much scarier Freddy Kruegar would be if he belted out a good "KRUUUUUUEEGARRRR!" while leaping out of, what, a friggin' pie or something. This is assuming you're having a dream about pies. I digress. I think the point is that I hated this god damned movie with a deep burning passion.

Most of the scares within the film are of the bullshit variety; Riverton is a town where friends like to jump really fast at each other from behind, just to say 'hi!'. Lame jump scares of this type seed all 88 minutes, and each burst of music is just there to highlight a stupid kid being overly-quiet and accidentally startling some other stupid kid.

In between the murders, the film doles out extraneous typical high school bullshit in a vapid attempt to keep us interested. The Jock likes to womanize a lot and The Geek has the inevitable awkward crush on The Cute Nice Girl. The Cute Nice Girl doesn't really know he's alive. There's also a collection of 'Mean Girl' style bad girls who rule the hallways with cruel and snobbish flair, and have some sort of side business selling - crap, something stupid. There's even a scene of said bad girls strutting down the hallways to the disco beats of Franz Ferdinand. I mean, you can't have a film involving high school kids without a scene of fashion savvy high school girls strutting down a busy hallway to the beats of some popular dance song, can you?

Inexplicably sewn into this entire mess is some sort of bizarre subtext about condors. I don't know what the entire deal with condors might be about. The Geek loves condors, and so I guess Wes Craven does too. But this entire subtext leads to one big WHY. Why condors? They're everywhere in this movie! Even the end credits of the film is a motif of cartoon condors, smiling and flying all cute-like about in a star-filled sky. One of the cartoon condors is wearing a tie. I just don't understand this. Why is that fucking condor wearing a tie? WHY IS THAT FUCKING CONDOR WEARING A TIE, WES CRAVEN?

The ironic thing about the title of this complete pile is it simply has no soul to speak of. My Soul to Take is amalgamated crap, crudely stitched together with fibers of pure nonsense to make a confused and schizophrenic being that shudders and mutters to itself as it shambles down the sidewalk of utter cinematic failure. This is perhaps the worst theatrically released horror film of the year. Wes Craven has lost his freaking mind.

This is a Day Two Review.