Fridae

The notties has been a bad decade for the American king of horror, who previously terrorised two generations of audiences with bogeymen like Freddy Krueger and a cloaked slasher wearing a Halloween mask. The big news this year is that after years of declining output and then inactivity, Wes Craven has started to film a new Scream trilogy starring the original cast. The new trilogy will most probably continue the writer-director’s penchant for self-aware, meta-textual horror films.

But first, Wes Craven needs to get in shape, flex his horror writing and directing muscles and My soul to take is his warm up to next year’s Scream 4. The premise is decidedly familiar and safe territory for the director. 20 years after a spate of serial killings, the presumably dead killer has become the stuff of a local legend which predicts that he will return to claim the souls of seven children born in the same town on the exact moment on night of his death. And on their 17th birthday, someone or something has indeed returned to hunt the seven children down, one by one. Who will be the last one standing and who will be unmasked as the serial killer?

One thing I’ll admit about Wes Craven in the age of the modern horror film – he never needs scare tactics to convey horror or schlocky soundtracks to send up the thrillers. My soul to take just simply works, even though you can play a party game during this film called “Identify which Wes Craven movie this scary moment or trope comes from”.

Even when it borrows and quotes so much from his previous works, this film does not cross the line into self-parody. Instead, it feels more like a mid-career summary and showcase of Wes Craven’s ideas about horror films. My soul to take is hardly original and does not try to be original – although it sure is pretty clever to turn a Marx Brothers/Woody Allen comedy routine into something far more sinister.