Review: My Soul to Take

Plot: Sixteen years ago, the town of Riverton was haunted by a sadistic killer with multiple personalities known as the “Riverton Ripper.” Eventually, the cops tracked him down and sort of killed him maybe? See, when they found him, he’d already stabbed himself a bunch of times, then they shot him a lot, then they put him in an ambulance but the ambulance crashed and then it exploded. But despite all that, the mystery remains: Is the Riverton Ripper dead?? I’d frigging hope so, otherwise the guy’s real name must be Clarke Kent. Anyway, on the night he may or may not have died, seven kids were born. Legend has it each kid got one of the Ripper’s personalities. Flash to the present day, the kids are all obnoxious and in several cases, really disgusting, borderline evil teens. Shockingly, someone starts offing the kids one by one. Is the Ripper back? Or is one of the kids doing the killing? Or is it someone … else? Spoooooky!

Thoughts: I’ve watched a lot of movies for this blog, and I’m not lying when I say almost all of them have been pretty poorly written. I mean, for god sakes Tommy Wiseau wrote one of them and I’m almost positive he’s insane.

                And yet, I don’t think I’ve seen a movie that made less sense than “My Soul to Take.”

                The biggest problem is Wes Craven. I mean, he wrote, directed and produced it so yeah, this is clearly his fault. I feel confident saying that this is the worst piece of crap he’s ever attached his name to and this man has attached his name to lots of junk over the years. 

Everything sucks. I'm not sure about the acting, I think it mostly might be Craven's horrible writing, but it's still not a great cast.

                Craven can’t figure out what kind of movie he wants “My Soul to Take” to be. Is it a slasher? Or a psychological thriller? Supernatural something or other? It’s got elements of all three sort of jumbled together into one big nasty stew.

                In the plot summary I mentioned each of the seven kids got one of the Ripper’s many personalities. Of course, one of those personalities is a psychotic killer, so we can assume one of the kids is a killer (or is the Ripper still alive???). That’s one. The Ripper also had a personality that was very artistic, and we learn one of the kids is awesome at designing costumes. That’s two.

                Other than those two examples, Craven completely ignores this plot thread. And the artistic one I had to piece together for myself while I was brushing my teeth this morning so for all I know that wasn’t even intentional.

                There’s also a lot of spiritual hooey about condors and how they eat the dead and supposedly absorb the souls of their meals. Turns out, one of the kids must be part condor because he has this power also. I mean, he doesn’t eat people, but I guess when people die nearby, he can absorb their essence. I uh… guess. I’m flying without a net here because none of this gets explained very clearly. It’s all in the movie, but Craven doesn’t seem that interested.

                Look, let’s forget about all that and just focus on the only thing Wes cares at all about: teenagers and their stupid f’n problems and relationships. This is his wheelhouse.

                We spend ample time finding out which girls our main character Bug (Max Theriot) wants to date, and we get to see him in class and presenting a project for Biology class, and him hanging out with his best friend, dealing with bullies. All this time wasted on trivial issues may have been better served trying to make sense of the rest of the plot maybe? No of course not! Kid problems!!

                Also, “My Soul to Take” does something unforgivable in my book. In the movie, the kids are constantly shown wandering around their high school, sitting in courtyards and things but are almost never in class. This is not how any high school works. If you don’t want to show kids sitting bored in class, make it the weekend or after 3:30. No public high school on the planet in the year 2005 just lets students roam freely for hours at a time.

                Somewhere around the third act the movie decides it’s a slasher again and so Craven grabs his other security blanket: talky endings. He actually does the “Scream” ending again. You know, the one where the previously ruthlessly efficient killer can’t stop talking about his/her grand plans and suddenly forgets how to kill things? Wes you lazy basterd. You (and Kevin Williamson) used the same frigging ending in four “Scream” movies and a werewolf movie, then you used it by yourself in “Red Eye,” and now this? Are you serious?

                I can’t even. I don’t know. The story is such a disaster, the directing is a mess. The opening sequence is an absolute joke well before the ambulance randomly explodes. I’m not even sure how bad the acting is because the material the actors are given is such a cluster f, it’s not super fair to judge the kids.               

                Still, I’ll assume it wasn’t great. Either way, the characters are all horrible clichés. The psycho with the abusive dad, the other psycho with the killer dad, the cute blonde, the rapey jock, the religious freak. Don’t care about any of you. 

Worst of the Worst

                At one point the killer says: “F you and f your unborn baby.” True story.

                I guess the real worst scene though is the opening. It’s full of so many quick cuts and fakeouts that it’s impossible to follow. Cops make insane decisions like embracing seemingly dead serial killers. And the frigging ambulance blows up. Perfect storm of craziness.

Review: Cursed

So, “Cursed.”

                You know, the tendency when you have success with something is to push it as far as you possibly can. Perhaps horror director guy Wes Craven and his screenwriter pal Kevin Williamson should have just quit after “Scream.”

                After all, it’s sort of hard to top defining an entire genre of movies --- for better or worse --- for an entire decade.

                But they didn’t quit. The duo churned out two sequels to “Scream,” where a killer in a mask stalks sexy youths, then a werewolf movie, where a werewolf stalks sexy youths and then they went ahead and made another “Scream” just for good measure.

                And “Cursed” is a weird movie. Williamson and Craven clearly seem to be going for the same sort of wink-wink, nod-nod humor that worked so well for most of the first “Scream” movie.

                Only, instead of slasher conventions, this time their focus is on Hollywood culture. Which I guess is pretty funny to two guys who work in Hollywood, but not so much for the rest of us.

Clunky acting, bad script, lame visuals make for a movie I'd like to steer clear of watching again.

                I’m going to go ahead and spoil a lot of this movie, so if you haven’t seen it run! And don’t stop running until you find a place on the internet that talks about new movies.

                Christina Ricci and Jesse Eisenberg play a brother and sister, still sort of grappling (but not too much) with the deaths of their parents. Ricci is a producer or something on “The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn,” while Eisenberg plays a nerd. Shocking.

                One night, while driving back from the city, the pair get in a car accident after a massive wolf hits their car. They careen into another car, driven by Shannon Elizabeth, who’s sporting some very unfortunate bangs. Long story short, the wolf eats Shannon and bites Eisenberg and Ricci, cursing them to become werewolves. Unless they can find a way to break said curse.

                Oh yeah, there’s also a few useless subplots thrown in the mix for luck, I guess: Joshua Jackson trys to open up the least night-clubiest night club in the history of night clubs (lots of wax sculptures, no bar?), a high school bully who turns out to be gay for some reason, etc., etc.   

                Any way, the sort of main werewolf here is a crazy, back-stabbing publicist. With the right kind of ears, you can almost hear Williamson saying “Geez, publicists, amirite?” and then high-fiving Craven off screen.

                Towards the end of the movie, after her treachery has been revealed, the publicist narrowly escapes being shot to death by an entire squad of cops. Now, Christina Ricci’s character won’t stand for that. For one, she never liked the publicist to begin with, (because publicists, amirite?) but also because Ricci thinks she needs the publicist dead to break her werewolf curse.

                  She lures the publicist --- who’s now completely in werewolf form, by the way --- back by talking about how she has bad skin and a fat ass. Being a super-vain resident of LA, the wolf-publicist can’t stand for this and comes back to flip off Ricci, only to be promptly gunned down by the army of waiting police officers.     

                I didn’t get the movie’s humor and I’m not totally sure Williamson knew what to do with it either. He has characters deliver all sorts of painfully flat lines like:

• "That's enough with the biting!"
• Ricci: "All the good things in my life keep going away," to which Josh Jackson replied in a manly fashion: "I'm not going anywhere."

                And the thing is, he’s got a pretty talented cast. He just ends up making them all look pretty bad. Well, that’s not entirely true. Eisenberg makes himself look pretty awful with his half-assed scream during the carwreck scene and Milo Ventimiglia is the least convincing high school bully of all time.

                Eventually, we get the usual twists, turns and monologues during the climax that we’ve all come to expect from Williamson and Craven. Turns out the publicist wasn’t the main, main werewolf, but that’s only a surprise to the characters. The movie telegraphs pretty clearly who the real one is going to be, and even if it didn’t there are only so many characters it could be anyway. Personally, I was pulling for Kilborn, but alas, no.

                Once revealed,the real big wolf on campus predictably spends the finale sorta trying to kill Ricci and Eisenberg and sorta just trying to talk their ears off. I have no idea why our filmmakers are so fond of this plot device, but they must be head-over-heels for it because they’ve used it five times now.

                Mostly though, “Cursed” was just pretty yawn-inducing. The plot wound its way down a familiar path, never doing anything even close to the fun and clever stuff we got early on in “Scream.”

On top of that, I didn’t get the humor, the performances were clunky and the writing made them look even worse.   

Worst of the worst

See: Christina Ricci tells werewolf she has a fat ass. 

There it is kiddies, “Cursed.” Don’t blink or you might miss a mustache-less Ron Swanson early on as a helpful cop. Definitely the highlight.

Bumblebee tuna.

Cheese List Preview

So we’re going back to the realm of horror for this week’s Cheese List feature because it’s January and it’s freezing and yet still raining and awful outside, so really, what choice do we have?

                Our movie comes from a true legend of the horror genre, a name known far and wide, by both genre fans and the loved ones they drag to theaters with them.

                However, there’s a strong case to be made that this particular icon might be a wee bit over-hyped. A wee lot bit over-hyped.

                Sure, he’s responsible for some of the most memorable monsters to ever carve their way across the big screen, but nearly all of his movies have had glaring flaws. Usually around the ending.

                But as I remarked to myself this weekend as the end credits rolled on “Mama,” “well ... endings are hard,” so he gets a pass from most of the community for his obvious shortcomings.

This  week’s feature is a collaboration between said horror icon and a screenwriter pal, a pair that struck gold and gave us the most memorable slasher of the 90’s. This time around, the pairing elected to take on creature features, only the results wasn’t quite so golden as they were embarrassingly awful.

Let’s take a look …

Yup, it’s “Cursed,” written by Kevin Williamson, directed by Wes Craven and starring Christina Ricci’s forehead, Portia de Rossi, Shannon Elizabeth, Milo Ventimiglia and Christina Ricci.

Sexy “teens” and werewolves. Boy oh boy.

Credentials: 16%, Certified rotten (rottentomaotes.com) // 4.8 out of 10 (imdb.com) // 31 out of 100 (metacritic.com)

Here’s what our friends the critics had to some about “Cursed”:

“The scariest thing in the movie is a cameo by Scott Baio,” said Ben Kenigsberg of the Villiage Voice, which seems needlessly mean to poor Scott Baio.

And because we all know the only thing movie critics love more than Meryl Streep is a lame, title-based pun: “Dumb werewolf movie may leave you feeling cursed,” so sayeth Beth Pratt from Common Sense Media. 

Now, this is the part where I usually crack wise and post a super-negative review and try to convince you it’s actually a positive one. We have fun, you and I. But this, this I swear to Jay-Z is an actual positive review.

“Until this past Friday, the worst werewolf film ever made was, hairy hands down, Mike Nichols' Wolf. Cursed now assumes that dubious distinction and someone is going to have to try very hard to wrestle it away,” raved Rick Kisonak, from Film Threat.

            I kid you not. Rotten Tomatoes counted that one in the positive column. So “Cursed” should likely have an even lower Tomato-meter score, but so it goes.

Check back on Friday for my full review.

 

News: Craven talks, 'Kombat' returns and Hitting the Silver Screen!

Backseatcuddler.com

Craven spills the beans on ‘Scream’

                Not long ago I theorized that horror icon Wes Craven may just be a tiny bit overrated as both a writer and a director.

                Despite directing two tent poles of the horror genre (“Scream” and “Nightmare On Elm Street”), I argued Craven had yet to make a rock solid three act movie. And has made more than his fair share of truly awful movies.

And seeing as though no angry mobs have stormed my home armed with pitchforks and torches, I will stand by that statement.

                Arrow in the Head recently scored an exclusive interview with Craven, and collected some interesting tidbits about this and that, including the future of the “Scream” franchise.

                Yes, even though “Scream 4” was a failure both financially and critically (in this country at least), it still has a future. Craven and crew are just waiting for a script “worthy” of following up the turd that was “Scream 4.”

                However, the most interesting part of the interview, for me anyway, was this little ditty about why “Scream 4” failed to connect with anyone:

                “Maybe we needed to be more brutal and kill off the central characters. I don't know. I tend to not try to second guess myself.”

                What?!?!? No! You don’t say! You mean instead of stroking the egos of your aging cast, you could have finally, FINALLY had the guts to off one of them and lend even the slightest drop of credibility to your stagnating franchise?! No, no one wants that. What we want are new and exciting ways for killers to avoid finishing the job and instead leave Courtney Cox, David Arquette and Neve Campbell in easily escapable situations. Just like Dr. Evil would do.

                Read the full interview over at Arrow in the Head, if you haven’t already.  It’s worth checking out.          

Source: Arrow in the Head

Game on! ‘Mortal Kombat’ reboot in works

                Get ready to start mashing some buttons because “Mortal Kombat” might just be heading back to the big screen for the first time since 1997’s “Annihilation.”

                Allegedly Kevin Tancharoen is on board as director and Oren Uziel is set to write the script. The two were supposed to resurrect the franchise a few years back with “Mortal Kombat: Rebirth,” but that ended up getting turned into a web series instead.

                Outside of that, not much is known about the project except it has a 2013 release date.

Source: Joblo