Rish Outfield's reviews
Soul Survivors is a weird film. Another of the post- Scream "cool" teen Horror attempts, it starred Melissa Sagemiller as a girl who, right before college starts, goes to a party with her boyfriend (Casey Affleck), and her best pal (Eliza Dushku) and her boyfriend (Wes Bentley), who used to date Sagemiller. Well, the party gets creepy/weird (which I think was the aim of the whole movie), and one car accident and one start of school later, she starts freaking out. You see, her boyfriend died in the car accident, and she starts seeing him around school, along with a couple more ominous characters.
I'm not a fan of Soul Survivors. The film makes zero sense--less comprehensible than a Felini film dubbed in Japanese--but it still managed to be predictable in its own awful way. It was jam-packed with twisted quick cuts/shots of stuff with no explanation, obviously just to mess with us. About the thousandth time something appears and then is gone a moment later or when she tells somebody about it and it was gone, it got old. No, maybe sooner, maybe the hundredth time. When it doesn't work, is the screenwriter or the editor to blame?
It had a nice hip young cast. Dushku I used to despise, but she's really grown on me (not that this film is a showcase for her talents). Wes Bentley manages to seem threatening even when he's confused, concerned, or aroused. Angela Featherstone was the scariest part of the movie, playing Dushku's genderless vampiric new love interest. Luke Wilson has a small role as a sensitive priest (although I kept waiting for him to grope Sagemiller or at least ask her if she wanted to go to the beach or something). Sagemiller fared better; a handsome lass that looks like the love child of Ali Larter and Gwyneth Paltrow (if God could be that kind), and I hope to see her in other things in the future. Decent things.
Not all about the film sucked: The lighting was slick and glossy, there's a nice score when you actually hear it, the heroine was beautiful, falling leaves are cool. But other than that, we're talking simply awful, a real stinker. It not only manages to confuse, convolute, and confound, but ends in a moronic, have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too happy/unhappy/happy ending. You'd be hard pressed to find a slicker-looking, more awful modern horror film today. Oh, and what's with the cookie-cutter derivative, yet uniquely pretentious title?
Around the 1 hour 4 minute mark, I came really close to turning it off. But I didn't. Because of you people. I wasted my time and money on Soul Survivors so you don't have to. And hey, isn't that what friends are for?
I'd Recommend It To: People who still drop acid to The Wizard of Oz, but have worn out their tape.
Note: This review and the Skulls were based on the Unrated cut of this film, not the PG-13 version that played for thirty seconds in the theater.