My Soul to Take aka My Time to Waste

Despite listening to the warnings from the Bloody Good Horror crew, I went and saw this because they really made it sound awful but in a hilarious way and well, for me, that’s exactly what it was. The movie is utterly ridiculous. The kids are all really irritating. The story is a sloppy hot mess. The direction is a bit too modern and stylized for my liking.

The story was convoluted and nonsensical. At the start we see this regular-looking schmoe who it turns out has multiple personalities one of which happens to me a blood-thirsty killer dubbed The Riverton Ripper (why do movies and TV hate the mentally ill so?). The Ripper personality murders his pregnant wife then passes out and wakes up as Schmoe. Not realizing Wife is dead, Schmoe rings up his shrink who advises him to tell Wifey to take their young daughter and get the heck out. Doc himself will be right over. Schmoe realizes Wifey is dead and freaks out. Then he blacks out again.

Meanwhile, the daughter wakes up and heads into her parents bedroom where Schmoe is passed out on the bathroom floor. She goes to be with her mother and suddenly, Schmoe as The Ripper is rising up behind her, knife in hand ready to Ginsu the kid. Fortunately, the cops show up and blow several holes through him. He falls onto the poor kid who is snatched up by the copy. He’s all, “Are you okay?” and she looks at him with dead eyes and says, “Get away from me.” Hmm. Anyway, somehow the Ripper wakes up, gets the cops gun away from him and shoots the cop, then he shoots another cop (or maybe it was a EMT) who comes in. He’s about to blow away a Haitian EMT who walks in, but the cop comes to (yay, bulletproof vests!) and blasts him with his secret ankle gun.

Now, Schmoe the Ripper is being taken to the hospital. The cop and the Haitian EMT are riding along. Haitian EMT says something about Haitians don’t believe in multiple personalities, but multiple SOULS. Cop is radioing ahead about their crazy passenger and he gets an OB nurse who says, “It’s like totally bonkers here tonight. We have, like, 7 women in labor.” Cop is all, “Well, we’ve got the Riverton Ripper so make some room.” He also mentions Schmoe’s real name which causes the nurse’s eyes to get real big.

Suddenly, Schmoe the Ripper goes all Michael Myers in Halloween 4 and starts attacking the cop and Haitian EMT, slashing the latter’s throat. The driver loses control of the ambulance which crashes. The cop who was tailing them manages to pull out the cop who was riding in the ambulance. They find the gurney empty next to the river.

Fade to 16 years later. The kids of Riverton are having a gathering at the site of the ambulance accident (complete with the burned-out ambulance still at the site because apparently the town can’t afford a tow truck) and blabbing about how 16 years ago that day, 7 of them were born (and the guy HELPFULLY introduces all of the Riverton 7 because apparently, none of the other kids at this gathering know who they are…or it’s just clumsy exposition) and the Riverton Ripper died. Allegedly, every year, these 7 hold some kind of ritual where one of them shoves the Ripper down to keep him from coming back to wreak havoc. [Side-rant: the only possible annual tradition a group of 16-year-olds could possibly have is shopping for the first day of school.] This year, it’s up to our annoying protagonist Bug to do it. Out of the woods, comes a giant puppet that looks like a home-made Predator costume. Bug is a giant wuss who’s afraid of what he HAS to know is a dude in a COSTUME (I mean, they've been doing this for YEARS)! Before he can fulfill his “destiny”, the cops come and bust up the gathering. Kids go scattering into the woods. While they hide, we get random exposition that one of the kids is blind and another has an abusive stepfather. Did you say, “Whatever”? Oh, no, that was me.

To sorta summarize, the kids start dying. Is the Ripper back or is someone else offing these annoying little brats? Maybe the Ripper’s SOUL(s?) was transferred to one of the kids who was born the night he died. Woooooooooo! Spoooooooooky! Actually, it’s not.

This movie was laughably bad. Things are treated as important that turn out to have no significance at all. For instance, the blind kid. So while the nurse in the intro is on the phone with the cop, another nurse rushes by and says one of the kids is blind. This is a factoid you may or may not even hear. So you’ll have to watch closely to figure out which kid is blind. (I’ll admit I knew to look for him because the BGH guys mentioned it.) You do see him with a cane at points in the movie and I think someone else brings it up, but really, it’s not that important. Really. It's not.

Also a throwaway plot: there’s a whole lot of nonsense about the principal’s 15-year-old daughter being pregnant, maybe by this jock who is one of the Riverton 7. Wanna know how that turns out? Tough! It has nothing to do with anything.

Was there really a point to the born-againiness of the redhead? NO!

Was Craven trying to make some kind of STATEMENT about bullying with the one girl running some kind of (literal) hit list? And on that note, would the whole school really be in fear of some girl who was too dumb to graduate with her class the previous year (or two years)? I’d be mocking her for the idiot she clearly is instead of becoming part of her multi-ethnic mafia.

The one thing ONE THING I will give this movie credit for was doing something also done in the Friday the 13th remake. They gave me a Final Girl who wasn’t really the Final Girl. Here, they did it TWICE. We have two female characters who have much of what it takes to make it to the end credits. Neither is portrayed as particularly bitchy or slutty and they’re both fairly nice to, HECK, even ATTRACTED to, our “hero”. Doesn’t do much for them in the end. Meanwhile, the chick that’s mean to EVERYONE makes it to the end in the most inexplicable way possible. Whoops. Spoiler.

And let’s talk about The Ripper himself. Clearly, Mr. Craven has taken a page from the Guide to Making a Horror Film 2010 edition. Page #14 dictates that your killer must be at least 7 feet tall, have scraggly hair, and wear a trench coat (unless you’re remaking A Nightmare on Elm Street in which case you must cast someone barely taller than the kids he’s terrorizing as your antagonist). It skipped the page that said, “Unless his name is Jigsaw, your killer must never speak. That shit’s been done to death.” (Another page skipped in the Elm Street remake.) The first time I saw The Ripper (the actual killer…not the puppet the kids use for their “ritual”), I actually laughed out loud. Frankly, the thing looked like a Predators prototype that was rejected. Craven must have been walking through the set of that movie and saw this and when told they weren’t using it, asked to take it for his movie.

Oh, and this was shown in 3D in some theatres. I saw it in regular old 2D. I'm glad I didn't have to spend that extra $3.

Overall, I would never recommend anyone see this movie without copious amounts of booze and friends who are good at MST3King movies. This movie might just be The Room of the horror genre.