“What’s the drama?”

Justin’s rating: Freddy coming into this movie’s dreams would’ve been an improvement

Justin’s review: For a while there in the late ’90s and early 2000s, it seemed that any teen star from The WB or Fox or UPN was automatically given their own horror flick. Some were pretty great. And some were Soul Survivors.

Aww, was that too mean? C’mon, who even remembered this, nevermind saw it back in 2001? It completely bombed in reviews and at the box office, and if it wasn’t for the fact that it starred Buffy’s Eliza Dushku, American Beauty’s Wes Bentley, Old School’s Luke Wilson, and one of the more disposable Afflecks, we probably wouldn’t be talking about it right now.

Soul Survivors was one of those odd PG-13 efforts that dipped into the supernatural (as was the style at the time) and even psychological. The problem — well, the first of many — is that it fails in that cardinal rule for a horror flick to have an intriguing premise that can be explained succinctly.

Seriously, there’s no short elevator pitch here but rather a jumble of Twilight Zone silliness. Four college friends go to some wild party in an abandoned church — you know the type, where there are flaming barrels and nobody respecting personal boundaries. There, some creepy dudes look at them from afar, and then they leave only to get into a car crash. One of their number dies, and the survivors start seeing some weird stuff including the masked dudes. Oh, and the dead kid might be a ghost? Or not?

Reality starts going all wibbly-wobbly, which is usually a sign that we’re entering the territory of dreams or hallucinations. I hate that stuff. Don’t make me buy into your plot only to pull the rug out from under me by saying that it’s all meaningless. That’s a waste of everybody’s time, and it’s never as interesting as the screenwriter thinks it is.

Nobody really DOES anything here. There’s no forward momentum. Just people sitting in rooms or going on walks until something slightly weird happens. Then they talk about it, but they never do anything about it, because what’s there to be done? Our lead character, Cassie, mostly spends her screen time alternating between cringing and telling people, “I’m not crazy!”

I’m not a champion of slashers, but at least those movies tend to have a very straight-forward plot that makes a certain amount of sense. Here, it’s never really clear (at least until the end) what’s going on, what the threat is, and what’s real or not. Way too many flashbacks, voice-overs, and characters who suddenly morph into other characters contributes to the incoherence. The PG-13 nature means that any horror elements are toothless jump scares and nothing more than that.

Soul Survivors wants to be a head trip that messes with your mind, but about all it can accomplish is give the viewer a headache.

Eunice’s rating: Dude, what is wrong with me?

Eunice’s review: Four friends are heading off to college: Cassie and Annabel to the same one, Matt to Harvard, Sean to somewhere. For their last night together they decide to go partying. They have a couple of run ins with another group of people, some of them drink too much, stuff happens, and it all winds up with Matt kissing Cassie and Sean catching them and Annabel being oblivious to what’s going on.

They head for home with Cassie upset at the wheel. When the car in front of them, containing the dodgy trio from the party, skids on the rain slicked roads they end up with a head on collision and both cars going over a cliff. Sean, who was Cassie’s boyfriend, dies in the wreck and Cassie is left with the guilt. The guilt of being the driver, the guilt of the last thing she said to him being a fight over a misunderstanding, survivor’s guilt, but more than anything she had the chance to tell him she loved him but was too afraid.

Three weeks after the accident Cassie returns to college dour, distracted, guilt ridden, and… paranoid. Floating through her life in a state unreality Cassie begins to see flashes of strange things, maybe it’s all in her head. But then she starts getting visits from Sean! He keeps speaking in cryptic warnings about her being in danger and if she stays she’ll die. That’s when the dodgy characters from the club start stalking and chasing her. Or are they?

And yes, it is as sappy as it sounds. See, Soul Survivors is a horror romance. Cassie is so blond and sweet she’ll make your teeth hurt. And Sean (played by Casey “hey at least I wasn’t in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie” Affleck) while alive is kinda just as nauseating only without the blond. Dead he’s always gently back-lit, with gossamer floating behind him and literally a choir of female voices singing in the background. You know, in case you forgot he was dead. In fact, forget sappy, it’s downright treacly.

Then there’s the ancillary characters Matt and Annabel. Annabel is played by Eliza Dushku (who was obviously the most famous cast member at the time, just look at the poster) and is basically playing Faith. She’s a bad girl, I’m guessing because she’s the brunette and smokes. Matt is… the other guy? He used to date Cassie and now dates Annabel but wants to still date Cassie but is content to be in the Friend Zone. That is his only defining trait. I would say Matt and Annabel are also changed by the accident, but they’re not really defined enough to begin with. Annabel parties a lot and Matt is a clingy creeper.

That brings us to problem number two: Not only are the characters paper thin, but so is everything else. I’m not going to say how it ends, but if you’ve seen your share of horror/morality tale movies and TV shows then you’ll see the twist coming from a hundred miles away. The clues are so heavy handed it’s insulting. Look, movie, I don’t need a flashback to something that happened fifteen minutes ago.

It’s so by the numbers of the common teen horror and thriller flicks of its time it’s embarrassing. Let’s go through the checklist shall we? Majestic historical college campus. A guy in a threatening mask. Someone is on the swim team setting up for a pool attack. Shower scene. Religious imagery. And running. Lot’s and lots of running. I’m thinking the writer had some sort of terrible track experience, because according to this movie the most threatening thing someone can do is run.

All this would’ve made the movie average, but it continues to be drug down.

I will admit there are some parts that aren’t so bad, honest to goodness decent ideas, things that someone with a defter hand could’ve ran with. Seriously, if someone wants to claim this as the worst horror movie ever then they need to expand their film watching horizons.

But everything about the execution is lacking. The necessities for the horror genre — tension, atmosphere, creativity, imagination — are absent. The PG-13 rating takes away any teeth it could’ve possibly had. It’s like the camera was just turned on the actors, then instead of actually acting they just said their lines. Honestly, from mains to extras, the only one earning their paycheck is Luke Wilson as Father Jude. Special bad points go to Casey Affleck, it’s painful to watch him talk without any emotion.

But you know what? I’ve seen Soul Survivors a good 10 times, maybe more. Why do I keep watching?

Well, for some reason when I’m not watching the movie I have myself convinced that I enjoy it. I like horror romance, especially couples working together without one of them being the killer (I also like horror stories with siblings working together), it’s different than a whole group of people sniping at each other and getting knocked off one by one. So when I remember Soul Survivors, in my head, the romance part isn’t treacly. Also, that those aforementioned ideas are good enough to overcome the acting and direction. When I actually watch it, it’s then I realize the truth: I just keep rewriting the movie in my head! Gah! Why do I torture myself?

Which brings me full circle to my rating, “Dude, what is wrong with me?”

Intermission!

• Soul Survivors released four days before 9/11, which couldn’t have helped.
• Every girl needs an emotional support dinosaur
• Branding people with wax for a traveling party?
• This is the fastest an Affleck has ever died, and I am not sad.
• “Join the living!”
• Dead boyfriend shrine, that’s normal!
• That’s a hilariously extreme nose bleed
• Painting montage is the worst kind of montage
• Fully clothed shower scene where people are scrubbing paint off each other is… uncomfortable
• OK the picnic dream love scene was impossible to take seriously
• The end of this movie is a music video, I guess