Like fellow horror film maker John Carpenter, Wes Craven is now in his fifth decade of making movies. And while both of them prove to be capable storytellers when it comes to directing a slick Hollywood thriller, Craven has now evolved into a screen writer of shockingly poor ability.
His latest supernatural horror, My Soul To Take, is utter shit. There's no getting round the fact this is one of the worst scripts I've seen in recent years...and you're talking to someone who's seen a million cheap exploitation films in his years AND has a high resistance to liking naff entertainment. But My Soul To Take is way too much to take. If there's one thing I cannot abide in a movie it's boredom. It's THE worst thing any piece of art can be. And thanks to Craven's script this is the one horror film this year that'll make you want to slash your wrists while watching ab acre of paint dry, while cutting your jacobs off with a rusty blade. It's that dull.
The movie is 30 minutes too long, the serial killer is rubbish (in both visual design and concept), the cast are average but unremarkable, and the story slow and confusing. The main concept about a small town killer's soul being reborn in seven new born children, on the day he died, is extremely convoluted resulting in the audience have absolutely no idea who or what is happening through the bulk of the film (and this is from a person who gets Inception). There are endless scenes of brain numbing dialogue along with long, drawn out scenes of characters engaged in teen banter (that's supposed to come across as witty in a Kevin Smith / Tarantino kind of way, but isn't). Many many time my internal monologue yelled at the screen for the stupid people to stop their jaws from flapping and prayed (I'm not even religious) for the cast to get brutally butchered.
In the end you get a film that's a cross between Craven's biggest hit A Nightmare On Elm Street and Scream...and ends up being a timid shadow of both. As bad as John Carpenter movies got on occasion, they were never this bad. A career low for Wes.
1 comment:
Jeez! Was this shit or what?
This was a like a first draft screenplay with a few loose, hackneyed, unfocussed ideas just thrown together haphazardly with no intelligent or interesting narrative. The cast were all terrible and the whole thing was a long, confusing, tedious mess.
Craven, I want those two hours back, you c**t!
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