'My Soul to Take' Movie Review

Legend has it that the killer was a schizophrenic with seven personalities -- only one of which was a murderer -- and when he died, each personality went into one of the Riverton Seven. Now, on their sixteenth birthdays, the seven teenagers are being hunted by a shadowy figure. Could it be that one of them has the soul of a killer? The most obvious suspect might be Bug (Max Thieriot), whose awkward, frustratingly dim outsider status makes him the most unpredictable of the group.

But what if the Ripper never died that night? They never found his body, and he might have simply been biding his time, waiting for the moment to take revenge. There's no shortage of suspects, and the more Bug investigates the less sure he is that he himself isn't the killer. After all, you never know what the other side of your personality might be up to.

While it has the potential to build a compelling whodunit along the lines of Craven's Scream (which he didn't write), the story fizzles by the time it reaches the underwhelming climax. It lacks Scream's twists and hip self-awareness that allowed it to toy with the horror clichés that My Soul to Take trots out one after the other. As a screenwriter, Craven's genre chops might be rusty, and as a result, the movie feels like a bit of a relic.

On top of that, it's just confusing. Tying together schizophrenia, soul transference, mental telepathy, Native American legends, local folk tales, religious premonitions, and mixed-up identities, the script is all over the place, full of red herrings and false foreshadowing and too many aspects explained away by "legend has it..." You stick with it for a while, hoping that the culmination provides a surprise or two, but ultimately it settles for one of the duller, more predictable possible plot developments.

Craven is better behind the camera, handling the genre fare with a steady hand, although it all feel very matter-of-fact, as if the director is biding his time for Scream 4. Speaking of matter-of-fact, did you know that My Soul to Take is in 3-D? I barely did, and I watched it. This might be the most pointlessly 3-D movie in recent memory. There's minimal action, and it's no more visually stimulating than your average romantic comedy. Perhaps the most impressive-looking scene from the trailer -- an ode to the original Nightmare on Elm Street with the Ripper emerging through the wall over Bug's bed -- isn't even in the final cut of the movie. If more films use 3-D technology in as pedestrian a fashion as My Soul to Take, this might spell the end of the modern fad.

• Acting: C+ (The cast performs as solidly as their one-note characterizations allow. Emily Meade stands out as shool bully Fang.)
• Direction: C+ (Competent but delivers lackluster thrills.)
• Script: D+ (Jumbled and anticlimactic with shallow characters.)
• Gore/Effects: B- (Decent R-rated gore; professional effects.)
• Overall: C (Disappointingly standard horror fare from a genre legend.)

My Soul to Take is directed by Wes Craven and is rated R by the MPAA for strong bloody violence, and pervasive language including sexual references. Release date: October 8, 2010.