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| With a foil cover, like 1996 Comic Books! |
Director: Steve Carpenter.
I'm not sure how this idiotic retread of Carnival Of Souls got made, let alone how they got the cast they did to actually be IN this thing. Bentley was hot off of American Beauty, Dushku had been on marginally popular cult show Buffy:The Vampire Slayer, and people had kinda/sorta heard of Affleck and Wilson. Granted, nobody had ever heard of Melissa Sagemiller, and really never did again. Well, okay, she eventually went on to do some pretty important TV work but the joke doesn't work with that truth, so let's just pretend she never went on to work again, shall we?
Anyway, haven't watched this movie in years, kind of reluctant to do it now, but a friend of mine requested I do it awhile back and he recently, like, broke his face so I'm going to riff away on this movie like it's my god-given purpose in life to cheer the poor guy up. Not that he needs cheering up, 'cause that's kind of his jam, but it makes a good enough reason to force myself to get through this thing.
I think I'm going to need a beer, though.
I think I'm going to need a beer, though.
Nothing quite says "violent rapey attack" like techno music. Good choice, movie. That really sold the graphic nature of the aggressive moment on screen for me. We then cut to...wait, was that NOT the lead getting murdered on screen just now? Did they cast a blonde who looked just like the lead for that scene? That's kind of confusing.
Casey Affleck and Wes Bentley have a charming moment of exposition where they discuss who is more pathetic: Affleck, the current boyfriend, for helping the lead pack for College when she's not going to the same school, or Bentley, the ex boyfriend, for helping the lead pack...y'know what, the point of the scene was to establish that Bentley isn't dating her anymore. It doesn't matter anyway. None of this matters. If nothing else, Soul Survivors fills me with an existential nihilism that makes me realize that all life and happiness is fleeting and temporary. There is no heaven, there is no hell, we are but mildly evolved organisms that, due to cosmic accident, happen to exist on a planet that will eventually be destroyed by the very sun that gives us life. Our emotions are illusions of independence, our art is nothing more but a fake eloquence. We pay money to watch movies with Casey Affleck in them. We came from nothing and, one day, that is where we will return.
Anyway, not that it matters, our four leads (good girl Cassie, good boy Sean, bad girl Annabel and bad guy Matt) decide to go to a campus party and discover, to their chagrin, that it is lame. So they go to some goth-rave-thingy at a converted church with fire and goth leather, and Dushku and Sagemiller grinding and writhing and, especially in the case of Dushku, apparently having a seisure on the dance floor. They are then targeted by the mask wearing guys from the pre-credits sequence. There's some awkward romance from Sagemiller and Affleck. Then Bentley hits on Sagemiller. It's also awkward, but for different reasons, probably because Bentley has trouble appearing like anything other than a serial killer. His weird "one last kiss" bit doesn't help the "I'm not a serial killer" vibe, either. Obviously, they kiss, her boyfriend sees it and he's pretty upset. Of course, he DID just say he loved her for the first time, so...kissing another dude was kind of a poor decision.
Anyway, Cassie is distracted by the drama and rams into the car of the masked psychos and everybody crashes into a marsh or something. Then they are whisked away to a hospital where Cassie has a strange protracted surgery sequence, and then we're at Casey Afflecks funeral, then Cassie is in class....wow, this movie apparently has attention deficit disorder.
Lots of Church imagery in this movie already. I suppose that's nice-the buildings and gazebos and all are nice looking-but it's also really obvious as a visual device. What college is she going to, anyway? They mentioned Bentley went to Harvard but...and wait, does she have a huge loft apartment as a Freshman? That's insane. How am I to relate to her under those circumstances? It's no wonder she has trouble dealing with her life: she has Casey Affleck reading lines in her head at all times. I don't think I could live with that kind of stuff.
Dushku shows up to look and act like a goth barbie psychopath. She also brings an androgynous Angela Featherstone, looking like some sort of cross between Boy George and Robert Smith, and is psychic or the devil or something...and WAY overacting. Anyway, Cassie tells them she doesn't want to go partying, 'cause she's a good girl and has a midterm and also she's sad...and then she goes out by herself anyway. She's attacked, and then she has a "flashback" to her surgery...I forgot how heavily this movie tipped its hand: the angelic Luke Wilson, the churches and gazebo, the hell-like night club, the obvious "flashbacks" and the dreams about Casey Affleck. They may as well just flashed "By the way, all of this is their fighting to find out if they're going to live, go to heaven or hell, and stuff. You guys get that, right? THEY ARE ALL STILL IN SURGERY" across the screen. Or maybe have Wes Bentley turn and look at the camera and say it in his monotone, crazy-man voice. Holy crap, they more or less actually DID flash it across the screen. The questions on her midterm basically say it directly. It's extraordinary.
Weird painting montage makes me feel weird. Like, suddenly, it's a sitcom. Then there's Dushku and Sagemiller washing paint off of each other in the shower. They're clothed, so it isn't THAT pornographic but...well, it's kind of a fake suggestiveness. I can't say it's actually suggestive because, well, that would require actual filmmaking. But it wants to be suggestive. I don't even know entirely how to adequately convey the ineptness of this film.
And then there was Eliza Dushku and Angela Featherstone licking one another, because that's how hedonistic people do their sexy stuff, and Featherstone's breasts. Okay, not sure what was to be gained from that...this movie really wants to be sexually charged and subversive but ultimately comes across like a kid who just found his first porno magazine. Even the "sexy" stuff seems really sterilized and remote, like someone who has only heard about sex from secondhand sources trying to write a letter to Penthouse.
Casey Affleck pops back up to basically outright say the films twist to the audience as well. Cassie starts running around like a lunatic, because she wishes to take the word of people she likes less (who basically rape her, by the way: Bentley had sex with her when she wasn't really all there) over the word of her boyfriend, since she basically believes that he's dead and they're not...of course, Affleck only alludes to things instead of saying "Hey, you're in a hospital and you need to wake up" or whatever.
Considering that this film is essentially a pre-death coma dream, you'd think there'd be more of a surrealist style...or a style of any kind. Show me danger, show me confusion, contrast that with safety and serenity when in the presence of Luke Wilson...instead every scene is more or less presented with the same primetime soap opera, soft lighting, melodramatic posturing. Plus, awkward attempts at scandalous values and no real sense of scene cohesion. Like, Anabelle was pissed at Cassie and Matt but now they all get along? Okay.
Hmm. One actual thing I kind of like: Dushku and Bentley actually are agents of hell(?) or the afterlife or whatever, and are actually attempting to convert her to joining their side of the equation. However, heaven doesn't really seem to be represented, so maybe it's just the afterlife. But Dushku says "You just want to stay here, don't you, so you can have everything and we get shit." I like the idea of already dead people hanging out in purgatorial space trying to usher people to the great beyond.
What I don't like is this weird techno/alt-rock score to violence scenes. Seriously, what the hell is this shit? Is this a horror scene or a Daft Punk show? How about music that actually tonally fits the action on screen? Assholes!
The beer I drank was of little solace. Probably because I came to the realization that somewhere in this meaningless civilization someone positively, and without irony, loves Soul Survivors. This fact will certainly make me cry myself to sleep tonight.
I've more or less given up on really working with this movie anymore. I'm just waiting for it to end. As the narrative attempts to convey an out-of-control spiral, the movie actually literally spirals out-of-control. Cassie goes home, finds Annabelle on the porch...she points Cassie out to the police, she's hit by a car and...back to surgery and...man, I think(hope) this is essentially ending. Oh, lord, movie, we get it: I don't need Cassie running through the hospital and seeing all the people she saw in her little coma fantasy all dead in real life. You were not that subtle. You, actually, were the opposite of subtle. You telegraphed absolutely everything. You haven't earned any of this, especially not this overacting on the part of our lead as she runs down hallways occasionally stopping to scream unconvincingly at nothing.
Cassie says she would die for Casey Affleck. I could only ask "why?" Of course, it would help if I knew anything whatsoever about his character, which I don't, since he basically had two minutes of screen time. He tries hard with his scenes, though, I'll give him that. Anyway, her eternal love for the two-dimensional kid allows her to survive and escape from her coma-thingy and I just want this to end. Please end. Now.
Nope, we get another dream sequence and she wakes up next to her boyfriend and...now end. Please. End. End now. Now.
Credits. With The Deftones song "Change" which is actually a pretty okay song and much better than this movie deserves. But, it's over. It's all over.
Final Thoughts: If I ever have the opportunity to meet Eliza Dushku at an autograph signing, I will ask her to autograph my VHS copy of Soul Survivors. When she asks me how she should sign it, I will reply: "I apologize, Nathaniel. Love, Eliza Dushku." I will then ask her to reimburse me for the $2.99 I paid for this tape in 2003 or whenever the hell it was. When the aforementioned transaction is complete, I will then-without breaking eye contact with her-throw the VHS into the nearest garbage can.
Final Rating: 1 star.
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