My Soul To Take (2010)

[Dr. Briggs]

It is supremely hard for me to judge this film... why? Because Wes Craven is a superb director when it comes to camerawork, building the feeling of horror and making very sympathetic characters (Characters are possibly the one reason why Cursed was any good)... but when it comes to pacing the action, and actually writing lines for said characters (not to mention directing their acting... oh God, their acting...), Wes fails and fails hard.

I'm not gonna lie, I loved about the last 45 minutes or so of this film. It shifted your perception on characters, established a boatload of suspense, enhanced the mystery aspect, delivered some jarring surprises, worked with the plotline in unexpectedly interesting ways, and (in my case) gave an ending that jarred a real emotional reaction...

But before that, my jaw nearly dropped at how much cheese and cliche the film could throw at us. In all honesty, I'm surprised anyone would make a film with such cheese in this day and age. The dialogue, whilst containing some gold nuggets that come back to make the climax great, are rather awkward, not to mention poorly delivered. The ripper himself despite being a very well-designed figure has the voice and often lines of, well, a parody, or at least a satire. I feel the intro should have been a much larger part of the film, established more about ripper's 7 personalities and built more suspense in less cliche ways.

Anyone notice how Bug's development kind of mirrors Alice's from Nightmare on Elm Street 4? Dunno if it's for the better or worse.

All in all I'd give this one a 4/10... best way I can explain that is that it started with a 5; all the disappointment throughout the film ripped off 3 points, but the mostly-excellent-somewhat-flawed ending easily puts 2 back. Had the film been well written, acted and paced enough to be "average," up unil the ending, the score would have easily been at least a 7, if not higher.