My Soul to Take movie review

Perhaps writer/director Wes Craven (Scream, The Hills Have Eyes) is getting too used to this slasher stuff. It's apparent he never flinched during production. Because of this, the audience won't much either.

Plot wise, I feel slightly misled by the opening scenes of My Soul To Take which show a schizophrenic murderer in his final hours. The camera zips around as a man switches between his caring husband persona and his demonically possessed alter ego. The constant angle switches and frenetic pacing means we can't process much of what's happening; a lot of people die, or almost die, something crashes, there's an empty gurney. The beginning is a lot of mind-twisting fun, but it turns out all we really need to know is there was a killer named "The Riverton Ripper" and he murdered a bunch of people -- yes, with a knife, that's right -- and now 16 years later, seven children who were born the night of the killer's disappearance are about to go through a similar experience. After such a dramatic and impacting beginning, though, the plot really just turns into a sideshow for Craven's mystic, symbolic meditations.

In fact, every facet of the movie does. The characters are reduced to archetypes (the religious fanatic, the hot chick, the disabled guy, the jock) and the movie's set in a small wooded town, a perfect breeding ground for tribalism. The premises are all based around the symbolic social structure of the high school cliques Craven's cooked up. Frustratingly, he lets the students hints at some big socio-political ideas, the word "revolution" comes up a few times and morality is the rationale behind some motivations, but nothing is delivered with conviction. Perhaps Craven was attempting to portray the undeveloped 16 year-old brain at work -- an odd mix of symbolic gestures, guess work and budding rationality.

The main formalistic problem with these issues is the movie begins to drift into the silly zone. Craven is comfortable with the subject matter and his Jungian point of view, he isn't treading new ground. The audience has no need to fear or explore for themselves. You'll probably end up laughing more at the movies concluding scenes than be frightened.

But as absurdly as it deviates from reality, My Soul to Take is hard to ignore. It feels like it's laughing along with us at itself most of the time, only to snap into a cold, penetrating stare.
Craven understands he's over-exaggerating our mystic nature, but refuses to let us forget that it's still there.

Despite its problems, I did enjoy My Soul to Take's humorous self-awareness. At least it's a movie that doesn't hide the fact it's trying to be fun and is amiable enough to let you in on it.

"Let Me In" Movie Review

Hell hath no fury like a woman’s scorn, or so seems to think Let Me In, originally written by John Ajvide Lindqvist and adapted to the screen and directed by Matt Reeves.

The movie begins with a young girl, Abby, (Chloe Moretz) moving to an apartment complex with an older man where she meets a lonely, 12 year-old named Owen (Kodi Smit-Mcphee). Boy likes girl, but girl can’t quite reciprocate. She’s got issues, you see, namely, she’s a vampire who needs to drink blood to survive and will burn if exposed to sunlight. The film never explains why she has to kill innocent, unimportant characters when drinking their blood; in one scene Owen cuts his hand and Abby uncontrollably turns into her vampire form and drinks the drops off the ground and he survives, but whatever, this logic lapse makes for some creepy death scenes!

The vampire attacks are done in CGI giving a jerky effect to the character, which may be a limit of the technology, but adds a perfect surreal touch to movements. Oh, and this Vampire has incredibly agility and climbing ability. Vampire Abby dashes up the side of buildings and trees to perch eerily on upper branches. All of this is enhanced by excellent cinematography which shoots these feats mainly from a distance and behind. It brought to mind a superhero movie where two random idiots somewhere in New York look up, point and shout: “Look, Superman! He'll save us!” Reeves seems intent on grouping us in with the pack. In this case the students at the school, part of the community that doesn’t quite get how difficult life can be for those that are less fortunate.

Let Me In plays as an interesting anti-thesis to Twilight, where male sexual desire was represented by Edward’s repression of his vampire om nom impulse towards Bella. The Smashing Pumpkins intro: “The World is a Vampire” is an apt description of Let Me In’s angle where Lindqvist sees the vampire as a feminine symbol. Women run the show in this one. “Has your mother been filling your head with this religious shit?” probes Owen’s dad over the phone when in an emotional state, he calls his estranged father to ask if there’s evil in the world. No son, there’s no evil. God’s a woman and there’s only female desire. Good luck with all your problems! Lindqvist reduces male characters to brain-dead servants.

As a horror flick, the movie succeeds in sucking a few creeps out of you. There are genuinely grotesque scenes, see disfigured man / vampire love, and the movie’s pointed thesis gives it enough pretension to not go for the cheap shock-scare.

In the end, Let Me In probably had to be made. Something to counter the manipulative beguilement of the Twilight series, but let’s hope vampires don’t go as crazy over other bodily fluids as they do for blood! If so, it’s going to be a long, long life for that vampire and her kid.