Movie Review Nightcrawler

Nightcrawler (2014)

Directed by Dan Gilroy

Written by Dan Gilroy

Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Rene Russo, Bill Paxton, Riz Ahmed

Release Date October 31st, 2014

Published October 30th, 2014

This article contains spoilers for the movie Nightcrawler. If you haven't seen it, see it and come back for this article. If you have seen it, be sure to share your thoughts in the comments. 

“Nightcrawler” tells the story of Lou Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal), a professional criminal in search of a job that can combine his blind ambition with his lack of a moral compass. He finds such a job when he witnesses a professional cameraman, Joe Loder (Bill Paxton), crawling over policemen and firefighters to get as close as possible to a fiery car accident. Joe’s ethos is ‘If it bleeds, it leads.' Lou never knew such a job existed; one that could nurture his lack of empathy and his blind ambition. 

Nina Romina (Rene Russo) is the perfect enabler for Lou Bloom. His equal in blind ambition and desperation, Nina is the 3rd shift News Director for the last place network in Los Angeles. When Nina meets Lou, she’s not all that impressed but desperate for a top story with some blood on it, she buys Lou’s footage and he gets his foot in the door. When next they see each other Lou has gone to some obviously ethically challenged lengths to get footage inside of a home that was struck by bullets from a drive by shooting. While Nina’s colleagues recognize the trouble with the footage, Nina has dollar signs in her eyes and buys the footage to air as the lead on that night’s newscast.

In Joe Loder and Nina Romina, Lou Bloom finds a unique parentage. In meeting Joe Loder and finding out what he does for a living the true Lou Bloom is born. When Joe rejects Lou, refusing Lou's attempts at friendship and job-seeking, Lou goes into business for himself and finds a welcome mothering figure in Nina. We can see in their first interaction that Nina has a soft spot for the soft spoken and unassuming Lou. When Lou begins delivering one big exclusive video scoop after another her pride in her pseudo-progeny bursts forward like that of a proud mother.

Things become twisted as Lou competes with Joe for scoops and the rivalry turns violent when Lou literally attempts to kill Joe by sabotaging Joe's mobile news van. If you posit Joe as a father figure to Lou by his having inspired Lou's new profession then the symbolism here becomes very important. Lou has eliminated the competition for the attention of Nina, also his top business competition and rival for Nina's money.

Then Lou turns his full attention to Nina, first demanding a date and when his advance is rebuffed he goes further by demanding a sexual relationship. Having removed his main rival for Nina's attention and money, Lou has a grave advantage over Nina and presses that advantage to take what he wants; sleeping with his surrogate mother/benefactor, sealing his true identity as a psychopath.

In the end, "Nightcrawler" is the story of Lou Bloom's journey to realization of his true nature. Yes, he was a psychopath before the movie began but once he meets Joe and Nina, the evolution towards accepting his true nature begins. We see him explore his amoral world, find his footing in a place where his lack of empathy, concern for others and blind, frothing ambition are welcome traits and in finally taking Nina as his conquest and vanquishing his rival, we find a man fully realized in all his psychopathic glory

Horrifying as it most certainly is, this strange arc makes Nightcrawler an endlessly fascinating character study. In Jake Gyllenhaal we have an actor capable of giving Lou Bloom's growing mania and lack of empathy a wide range of expression. Gyllenhaal's ability to switch gears from sniveling conniver to over-confifdent badass is something impossible to look away from. The birth and quick evolution of Lou's new persona, the perfect expression of his unwell psyche, is utterly riveting. 

Dan Gilroy's crisp, clean direction, gives remarkable life to the story of Nightcrawler. The film's imagery is vital and viscreral, it couches Lou Bloom in a very recognizable reality that he can stand out from as he becomes more and more deluded and dangerous. Lou Bloom both fits in perfectly amid the outsized characters who chase the news and stands apart from them as his actions express the the often ugly extremes of our modern news culture.

And yet, there is so much more to Nightcrawler., Each relationship Nick carries out in Nightcrawler is rife with meanings that can be parsed for days. I mentioned the pseudo-parental figures of Paxton and Russo and just take a moment to consider those relationships in the context provided by Nightcrawler. Each is rife with taunting questions about the parent child dynamic, the boss and subordinate dynamic and the passive and aggressive dynamic, the one that arguably defines much of Nightcrawler as Lou quickly moves from passive bystander to the aggressor in every aspect of his life. 

Movie Review Nerdland

Nerdland (2016) 

Directed by Chris Prynoski 

Written by Andrew Kevin Walker

Starring Patton Oswalt, Paul Rudd, Kate Miccucci, Riki Lindholme, Mike Judge, Hannibal Burress

Release Date December 6th, 2016

Published November 29th, 2016 

Nerdland features the voices of Paul Rudd and Patton Oswalt as John and Elliott, loser roommates starving for fame. John is an aspiring actor and Elliott is a screenwriter though neither seems particularly interested in the work that goes into becoming famous, just the fame. There could be comedy to be wrung from a pair of fame-whoring losers but Nerdland pretty much stops at making John and Elliott losers. 

After John fails at a lame attempt to get Elliott’s screenplay into the hands of a dopey movie star during an interview junket the two begin brainstorming awful get famous quick schemes. Among the failed attempts at becoming stars is a YouTube style video where they give a giant check to a homeless person in hope that their charity will go viral. Unfortunately, Elliott fails to record the attempt and the homeless man runs away with the oversized novelty check. 

After fame manages to elude them in several other ways the guys take a shot at infamy, brainstorming a mass murder spree. John and Elliott visit their landlord with the intent of making her their first victim, which should be easy, they reason, because she is very old. Naturally, they fail as killers as well and the film then spins off into a minor media parody after the guys witness a robbery and become the targets of both the police and dangerous mobsters.

Throughout the movie references are dropped regarding a rebuilt Hollywood sign. The reveal of the sign is mentioned several times during the film and it comes up one last time during the film’s climactic scene. Spoiler alert: We never find out why the sign matters in any way. That actually may not be a spoiler as it plays absolutely no role at all in the outcome of the film or the fates of John and Elliott and yet it drags on throughout the entire run of the movie.

The sign bit is emblematic of how sloppy and shapeless Nerdland is but that is not what makes the film so damn disappointing. It’s the talent that made this shapeless, sloppy, mess of a movie that is so disappointing. On top of Patton Oswalt and Paul Rudd, a dynamic comic duo completely wasted, we have the talents of Riki Lindholme and Kate Micucci, AKA Garfunkel & Oates, Mike Judge, Paul Scheer, Laraine Newman, Hannibal Burress and “Seven” screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker.

Chris Prynoski is the director of Nerdland and I have to imagine he is responsible for the final product. Prynoski has a cult following from his similarly odd animated TV shows Metalocalypse, Superjail, and the recent live action and animated series Son of Zorn. Prynoski’s style is combatively unfocused, he seems to actively not care if the audience laughs. Prynoski engages in the kind of anti-comedy that attempts to mine laughs from the absurd lack of something funny. Sometimes this kind of comedy can be exciting as a taunt toward a passive audience. In Nerdland it just feels messy and shapeless, even if you feel like you get the anti-joke.

I cannot for the life of me tell you why the movie is called Nerdland. I guess that John and Elliott could be considered nerds but they aren’t really interesting enough to earn any label other than losers. The one character who could rise to a common stereotype of a nerd is played by Hannibal Burress but he is such a grotesque caricature that he defies any simplistic label. Burress’s character is fat and sloppy and runs a comic book store and has access to the darkest corners of nerd culture; something the movie seems to use for narrative convenience except that Prynoski loses interest in even playing out his narrative clichés.

Anti-comedy is tough to pull off. The intent is to drive away lazy audiences and potentially entertain a few of the like-minded souls willing to overlook the ugliness to find the bold and daring comedy below. Andy Kaufman eating ice cream on stage at The Comedy Store is anti-comedy at its finest, a daring taunt from a comic genius who knows that the absurd silent scene on stage is funnier than most of the written material of any other comic. Chris Prynoski is no Andy Kaufman. His brand of anti-comedy isn’t as well refined or daring, merely off-putting.

The joke of Nerdland seems to be its own existence. It plays as if Chris Prynoski hired an all-star team of comic talents with the intention of doing nothing remotely funny with them. It is most certainly a taunt and it does provoke the audience but it lacks wit. Only Chris Prynoski knows why Nerdland is intentionally unfunny and if that self-satisfaction is enough for him then I bow to him. I don’t recommend his movie but I respect what I assume is the self-satisfying result.

Documentary Review My Date with Drew

My Date with Drew (2004) 

Directed by Brian Herzlinger, Jon Gunn

Written by Documentary 

Starring Brian Herzlinger, Drew Barrymore

Release Date August 5th, 2004

Published November 15th, 2004 

In reviews of Brian Herzlinger's documentary My Date With Drew words like 'charming', 'sweet' and 'cute' are often used. On the other hand, so are the words 'creepy' and 'stalker'. There are clearly two camps on My Date With Drew and I find that I agree with the creepy/stalker side. Yes, My Date With Drew has the admirable quality of extreme low budget filmmaking but it plays more like the audition tape to some dopey reality show. Was Brian Herzlinger making a documentary or just trying to get on MTV before he turned 30.

Brian Herzlinger has had a major crush on Drew Barrymore since he was six years old and first saw E.T. Who can blame him, she was adorable in that film and after some dark detours in her life she has remained adorable. So I can understand Herzlinger's fascination. However that is where we part ways. Where I am happy to admire Drew Barrymore's beauty and talent from afar, Brian Herzlinger took the 1100 hundred dollars he won on a game show and used it to land himself a date with Drew Barrymore and the idea for My Date With Drew was born.

With a camera borrowed from Circuit City that must be back before the 30 day return policy runs out, Brian and his friends set out on a variation of my favorite college drinking game: six degrees of Kevin Bacon--only replacing Kevin with Drew. Operating on the theory that everyone in L.A knows someone who knows someone who's cousin knows someone's facialist, Brian sets out to meet anyone who can get him close to Drew. Indeed he even talks to Drew's actual facialist.

The film features interviews with people like Drew's cousin, who has actually never met Drew despite the relationship. Brian interviews actor Eric Roberts who is on a TV show with Andy Dick who it is rumored is friends with Drew. Roberts offers little other than the fact that he may be slightly creepier than Brian. Roberts is also no help in getting Andy Dick who refuses an interview request. Somehow Brian works his way down the Hollywood food chain to Corey Feldman who dated Drew for two months sometime in the 80's but is no help in contacting her now.

That hint of irony that Brian brings to his encounters with Roberts and Feldman betrays the premise that My Date With Drew is really sincere. Feldman and Roberts have that desperate quality of the C-list celebs who will make time for anything they can put on the resume, and Herzlinger seems to exploit that in scenes that are more sad than funny. Therein lies the biggest problem with My Date With Drew, Brian Herzlinger's lack of sincerity.

I simply did not believe the whole thing was anything more than a career-making stunt. I appreciated his ingenuity but thought his abuse of Ms. Barrymore's persona was creepy and self serving. That eventually Ms. Barrymore see's his motives as pure and clever does not sway my opinion. The film lives and dies by Herzlinger's sincere feelings about Drew Barrymore and her work and I never bought it.

Yes, Brian gets his date with Drew, and her love for the project and sincere appreciation of Brian's persistence nearly made me like him and the movie. Barrymore takes the perspective that Brian is merely ambitious and ingenious and she is happy to help that. But that idea is at odds with much of what came before. Is this about Brian sincerely wanting to meet his favorite celebrity, or is this about his career? The film blurs Brian's real intentions.

There is a story of how Matt Stone and Trey Parker managed to get South Park on the air. They made a tape for some industry guy who passed it around Hollywood. It landed in the hands of George Clooney and, from there, onto the desks of the people at Comedy Central. That rough tape never aired but it opened a lot of doors. One of the reasons I found My Date With Drew to be less than sincere is that it plays a little like that South Park tape. It's rough but quite clever and plays like Brian Herzlinger's ploy to make a name for himself and not as the sincere childhood pursuit of a dream that Herzlinger claims it is.

I did enjoy Brian Herzlinger's encounter with Drew. She seems genuinely enthused and leaves any kind celebrity pretense out of it. She is truly what you would hope a big star would be like if you met her, and seeing that makes me want to like this little movie. Unfortunately I do not, because she is not the star of the picture.

When on the actual 'date', Drew talks about how chasing a dream and having the drive to make it happen is a wonderful thing and I don't disagree. That Brian Herzlinger set a difficult goal and achieved it is quite admirable but what does it say about that dream if realizing it is merely hero worship and opportunism. The emptiness of Herzlinger's goal and the creepy stalker-esque way he goes about achieving it brings a whole other vibe to the movie that I'm sure is unintended.

The very funny comedian Eugene Mirman once said that some percentage of stalking has to work. Brian Herzlinger may just be the proof of that. Okay, maybe it's a little harsh to call Herzlinger a stalker. The film never portrays him to be dangerous or deranged. The word I would use to describe him is misguided. I would think that someone of Herzlinger's imagination and sticktoitiveness could find something more constructive to do with his time than pursue a celebrity.

I can tell you this: I wish I'd had other, more constructive things to do than watch him pursue a celebrity.

Movie Review Night Catches Us

Night Catches Us (2010) 

Directed by Tanya Hamilton

Written by Tanya Hamilton 

Starring Anthony Mackie, Kerry Washington, Wendell Pierce

Release Date December 3rd, 2010 

Published December 7th, 2010 

A number of movies have tackled the story of the Black Panthers as they rose and became a force on the national scene. Their charismatic leaders became icons and their movement became a legend. As the civil rights era wound out the Panthers seemed to lose their way and many of their stories faded with the movement.

Director Tanya Hamilton takes us back to the time just after the Panthers heyday and in “Night Catches Us” gives us a composite story of the people who lived the legend and what happened to them in the wake of such astonishing drama, revelation, struggle, sadness and in some cases triumph.

It's 1976 and Marcus Washington (Anthony Mackie) is returning home to his South Philadelphia neighborhood for the first time in nearly a decade. Marcus left under a cloud of suspicion after one of his fellow Black Panther Party members was shot and killed by police. The remaining panthers came to believe that he ran because he sold the dead man to the cops.

Now, with his preacher father having passed away, Marcus returns to find many of the tensions he escaped still boiling. Marcus's brother Bostic (Tariq Trotter, The Roots) has become a devout Muslim who maintains a grudge but is more civil than most. The remaining Panther leader, Do Right (Jamie Hector) has allegedly turned to crime and intimidation as the tools of revolution.

Do Right makes his feelings clear by vandalizing Marcus's car, leaving the word 'snitch' etched into the side of the black caddie left to Marcus by his late father. The one person who welcomes Marcus back, even into her home, is Patricia (Kerry Washington), the wife of Marcus's former Panther brother who was killed by police.

The history between Marcus and Patricia is thick with meaning and in it “Night Catches Us” has a strong romantic/dramatic hook. Sadly, the rest of the plot hinges on characters whose actions are forced and used only as plot drivers, as if director Tanya Hamilton felt she didn't have enough juice in Marcus and Patricia's relationship to move the film forward.

Amari Cheatom plays Jimmy, Patricia's troubled cousin. Jimmy has a painful encounter with local cops that leads him on a path to the kind of militancy he believes the Panthers stood for. You might think Marcus would try to stop him but there would be no point, Jimmy is a creation of the plot meant to push conflict.

Stronger supporting performances come from Wendell Pierce as a corrupt cop holding Marcus's most difficult secret and young Jamara Griffin as Patricia's 9 year old daughter Iris. Pierce brings back fond memories of his performance as a much better detective on HBO's The Wire. Griffin is a young talent to watch, a natural actress with terrific instincts and a distinctive face.

When “Night Catches Us” is focused on Marcus and Patricia, their past and possible future, it is deeply moving and evocative. Setting their story, their past, with that of the Black Panthers, including archive footage to underscore the importance of the struggle they were fictionally part of, gives it a fiery context that encompasses them, their neighborhood and all around them. 

Jimmy, unfortunately, is a dramatic contrivance that distracts from the main story of “Night Catches Us” and leads us to believe that there is not enough in the main story to give the film the drive it needs to get to a satisfying conclusion. Too bad, Anthony Mackie and Kerry Washington indeed do deliver the goods. There was no need for contrivance, no reason for writer-director Hamilton to lack confidence and undermine her main story.

Movie Review Nocturnal Animals

Nocturnal Animals (2016) 

Directed by Tom Ford

Written by Tom Ford 

Starring Amy Adams, Jake Gyllenhaal, Armie Hammer, Michael Shannon

Release Date November 18th, 2006 

Published November 16th, 2006 

“Nocturnal Animals” is a daring film of unique power and affect. Directed by fashion designer Tom Ford, the film stars Amy Adams as Susan, a desperately unhappy Los Angeles art dealer whose past comes back to haunt her in the form of a book written by her ex-husband Edward (Jake Gyllenhaal). Reading the book, alone in her enormous and empty home over a weekend where her new husband (Armie Hammer) is out of town, Susan is struck by feelings for Edward she thought she’d lost years ago.

The book is called “Nocturnal Animals” and it is dedicated to Susan. The book is a revenge thriller about a family traveling through a West Texas desert when they are menaced by a group of criminals. We see the story play out in Susan’s imagination with Edward in the lead role of Tony, a good man but not one well suited for a confrontation with criminals. We watch as the confrontation between Tony’s family and the criminals grows from harassment to kidnapping and to something extraordinarily disturbing.

The film goes on to lay in the back story of how Susan and Edward met, fell in love and eventually fell apart. Susan devastated Tony and created a resentment that lasted nearly two decades. The book he’s written is in many ways a reflection of his hurt feelings but you will need to see the movie for yourself to follow that line of logic as I will not spoil anything here.

Michael Shannon plays a role in “Nocturnal Animals” that I am reluctant to go into in order to avoid spoilers. That said, Shannon is Oscar-level brilliant. Shannon acts with every inch of his gaunt frame and with his devastating glare. The character is not unlike a Quentin Tarentino character full of pith and anger in equal measure but slightly less morally ambivalent. It’s an exceptional performance, easily one of the best single performances of 2016.

“Nocturnal Animals” is the second feature film for Director Tom Ford following his artful debut, 2009’s “A Single Man” which won an Oscar for Colin Firth’s remarkable lead performance. Coming from the world of fashion, Ford has a phenomenal eye. Both “Nocturnal Animals” and “A Single Man” are gorgeous to look at even as they explore the uglier side of life. Even the grittiest moments of “Nocturnal Animals” have a beauty to them that most filmmakers would have foregone in trying to underline the grit. Ford smartly uses the crisp, clear cinematography to show that beauty exists even in the dark.

I must add a bit of a caveat to this review. Though I am recommending the movie highly, “Nocturnal Animals” is not for all audiences. The first moments of the film are taunting and provocative and will cause some people to walk out of the theater in protest. Full disclosure, I turned away from the screen on my first viewing and had to force myself to confront the images the second time I watched the film for this review. The opening has little to do with the rest of the movie but I appreciate how this credits sequence jolts us in the audience to wide attention.

Moviegoing is often a passive experience and the credits sequence of “Nocturnal Animals” breaks through that passivity in no uncertain terms. Could the film have done without the jolt? Probably. The story being told is quite good and the performances of Adams, Gyllenhaal, and especially Michael Shannon are strong enough to jolt audiences on their own. That said, I understand the inclusion of the opening and on reflection I appreciate the jolt even as it is quite forceful.

Movie Review Never Let Me Go

Never Let Me Go (2010)

Directed by Mark Romanek

Written by Alex Garland 

Starring Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield, Keira Knightley, Sally Hawkins, Charlotte Rampling 

Release Date September 15th, 2010

Published November 4th, 2010 

The wonderful thing about “Never Let Me” Go is how its languorousness invites the viewer to project a meaning onto it. Yes, that projection requires ignoring a few things about the characters and what is happening on screen but there is something valuable and even entertaining about a movie that gives the viewer so much room to move around. Some have found parallels to the holocaust. The great Roger Ebert finds a modern equivalent in the sad fate of workers at big box stores like Wal-Mart. Other critics acknowledge a philosophical truth in the film that is just out of their grasp but somehow knowing it is there is enough for them.

Strangely, I find myself somewhere within that last group. I too want to believe and have searched for various philosophic or metaphoric meanings in Mark Romanek's gorgeous direction and Alex Garland's teasing screen adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's moving if also vaguely interpreted novel.

Kathy (Carey Mulligan) fell in love with Tommy when both were young students at an out of the way private school somewhere in the English countryside. Kathy was a self conscious introvert with the soul of an artist. Tommy was an outcast prone to violent rages that only served to make him even more of an outcast.

The center of their world is their relationship with Ruth (Keira Knightley) a popular girl who befriended Kathy in search of a worshiper and fell in with Tommy as a way of preventing that worship from being cast elsewhere. It's clear to us and especially clear to Ruth that Tommy and Kathy should be together but her insecure need for their attention supersedes her ability to let her friends be happy.

This is especially tragic because Hailsham is not merely a country boarding school and the students are not really students at all. As explained in excruciating detail by one of the teachers, Miss Lucy (Sally Hawkins), Hailsham students will have painfully short lives in which they will donate their organs until they complete, a nicer way of saying they are spare parts until they die.

The brilliance of “Never Let Me Go” is not in setting up a life or death situation but in the real human ways that these characters take in this extraordinary information and assimilate this knowledge as part of who they are rather than the going concern of some sci fi story of survival.

The arc of the average life is played out with a timeline in mind that lasts a lot longer in our minds than in reality. For Kathy, Tommy and Ruth the arc of birth, life and death is compacted into a mere 30 years at most yet they grow and age and live as if a full life were lived.

They cram their short lives with experiences of love and compassion that a longer life no doubt takes for granted. When Kathy finally gets the opportunity to be with Tommy she doesn't spend much time lamenting, they get right to loving and while there is temporary hope for more life, Kathy is not so concerned about prolonging love as she is about enjoying what she has.

Ruth's is the saddest of all of the stories. Her life is marked by pettiness and a greed for attention. She found weaker kids and forced herself on their attention and in her fight to remain at the center of their world she destroyed them and herself, robbing all of them of the little life they could have had.

Carey Mulligan deserved an Oscar for her work in “Never Let Me Go.” The heart, the love and the compassion she portrays is the heartbreaking force of the film. A soul as wide and as deep as Kathy's deserved more than to be an organ bank and yet that is not what the film is about, it's about what life she brings to what little life she has and much of that is played on Mulligan's wonderfully expressive face.

Mark Romanek captures the essence of Ishiguro's novel in ways that most directors likely would not. Like Ishiguro, Romanek is not really interested in the grander political points about breeding humans for their organs. Rather, that is the setting for telling human stories about what real people would do in these circumstances. The fate of these characters lends a certain tragedy to them but that tragedy is compounded by what unique, fascinating and thoughtful beings these characters are.

The political points, the metaphors and meanings are ours to bring to the film. What Carey Mulligan, director Mark Romanek and screenwriter Alex Garland are focused on are the human beings and the lives they live against this unique and tragic background. It's a wonderfully experimental ploy and it works brilliantly as a movie that makes you think for yourself and moves you deeply.

Movie Review My Soul to Take

My Soul to Take (2010) 

Directed by Wes Craven

Written by Wes Craven 

Starring Max Thieriot, Denzel Whitaker, Raul Esparza, Shareeka Epps 

Release Date October 8th, 2010 

Published October 11th, 2010

How could a director as obscenely talented as Wes Craven turn out a work of such asinine numb-scullery as “My Soul to Take?” It's a baffling question. Do not be mistaken, Craven has splashed his name across a number of horrendous movies as a producer. He even directed the stupefying werewolf movie “Cursed.” That however, was written by Kevin Williamson and had any number of production issues.

For what we know of “My Soul to Take” from script to casting to direction, all was controlled by Wes Craven and this fact leaves one to wonder if the now 70 something director has abandoned his faculties.

”My Soul to Take” tells a vaguely “Nightmare on Elm Street-esque” story of a serial killer seeming to strike back after death. The 'Riverton Ripper' was a serial killer who happened to be a family man suffering from schizophrenia. He has seven personalities, one of which happens to be a deranged killer.

On the night of the birth of his son the Ripper murdered his wife and was thought to have died himself in a subsequent stabbing, shooting, car accident, and explosion and drowning. Somehow, doubt remains. 16 years later the son of the serial killer is unknown but he is definitely one of seven children born the night the ripper died.

Get it yet? Seven kids born the night the guy with seven personalities died? Huh? Maybe, each of the kids got one of the personalities? Maybe, even the serial killer one? Oh yeah, you get it. We get it. Oh, good god do we get it. “My Soul to Take” is dopey on a level of severe mental decomposition. What it lacks in intelligence it also lacks in scares, continuity, fluidity and simple coherence.

The cast of “My Soul to Take” is a group of non-descript youngsters just good looking enough to be pleasant but not interesting enough to be memorable save the poor lass saddled with the Jesus Freak personality, Zena Gray, whose flaming red mane and pale, statuesque skin evoke prurient sympathies even as her arch piety is an extensive put off.

The religiosity of “My Soul to Take” bears mentioning if only as yet another of the film's many punching bags alongside basic movie mechanics and compelling storytelling. The prayer of the film's title is used merely as a foreboding sounding phrase and has no use whatsoever in the film other than as a brief bit of dialogue.

The film's one truly pious character is a stunningly beautiful yet entirely overbearing figure whose beauty and innocence is guaranteed to be punished. There is some mention of a group of parents planning a meeting at a church however, because they were all conspirators in a lie about the son of the serial killer their religiosity is cast as something sinister.

I am the last person to defend religion but this type of amateur hour, faux critique is beneath even the most condescending of atheists and it turns “My Soul to Take” from something merely awful into something strangely offensive to even those that might share its perspective.

What a mind-blowing failure this film is. Granted, my feelings are colored by the fact that “My Soul to Take” comes from a director I have long adored and respected and that has certainly colored my opinion; possibly made my reaction even angrier. That said, “My Soul to Take” likely would not have been any good under any director; under this director it's just all the more sad.