SnoopyStyle Abel Plenkov (Raul Esparza) suffers from mental illness and he turns into the serial killer Riverton Ripper who kills with his blade engraved with vengeance. He attacks his family and causes the ambulance to crash. He's assumed to be dead. Exactly 16 years later, the local teens have gathered. Local legend dictates that the Ripper could rise on the anniversary and one of the seven kids born on that day have to drive Ripper back into the river. The seven are blind Jerome (Denzel Whitaker), smart-mouthed Alex Dunkelman (John Magaro), Jay (Jeremy Chu), timid Bug (Max Thieriot), religious Penelope (Zena Grey) who predicts the coming evil, Brittany (Paulina Olszynski) whom Bug has a crush on, and brute jock Brandon (Nick Lashaway). Some believe that the Ripper is still alive and then the killings start. Fang (Emily Meade) is mean girls queen bee and turns out to be something more for Bug.The story telling is too scattered especially in the first half. Bug is the lead and he needs to be in 90% of the movie. All the kids are annoying in some way. The horror story is lifeless. The villain isn't fearsome. The kills aren't gruesome enough. Nothing really stands out. The Fang reveal is pretty good but I never got invested in the characters. Their survival and even their deaths aren't compelling to me.

coastin_on_a_dream I was reading through the reviews on here and was a little surprised at how much hate there is for this movie. It's really not a bad movie.In my opinion, it had a creative plot and mythology to it. I've never heard of a premise like the one this film presented, so it was refreshing to see that it wasn't a typical run-of-the-mill slasher film, or some found footage movie, or some haunted house movie. This movie was had a unique, creative premise that pulled me in right away.A big criticism is that this movie is kind of confusing, but that's because it has a complicated backstory/mythology. You actually have to listen because there are some very important plot points that might take you a few seconds to process in your head. The "schizophrenic" elements to the plot made things very interesting, in my opinion! Other things I liked about the movie: -It had a cool setting, although I wish there were more scenes that take place on the bridge they feature during one of the first kills.-It spent some time actually developing some of the characters, which is something you don't see in every horror film. Adam aka "Bug" was a likable protagonist to this movie. I liked the relationship dynamic he had with his best friend, Alex, too. A few other characters did fall victim to the "I'm only in this movie to add to the body count" but there will always be those filler characters in horror films, I guess.-The acting was on point, for the most part. Many horror films feature cringe-worthy acting, where many actors sleepwalk through their scenes and deliver their dialogue in a wooden manner. This usually takes me out of the movie a bit and makes me focus on the awful acting. It's distracting. From what I saw, though, the kids they picked to star in this movie were pretty good. Nothing Oscar-worthy, obviously, but they're adequate. Especially Max Thieriot, who plays the main character, Bug. I think he has a lot of potential.Now, there are some major flaws about this movie though. Let's start: -The Riverton Ripper...to be honest, he wasn't that scary. I think it was a bad decision to have him speak. His dialogue was awful and sounded like it was written in 5 seconds. Very generic dialogue. Also, the way he looked was just a little too generic.-The kills weren't very memorable. There's a lot of kills, but most of them are just a quick stab and there's not a ton of build up. I wish the movie had more elaborate murder scenes.-Some of the characters were just bad, specifically Penelope and Fang. They were both annoying and Fang was extremely unlikable.-The finale to the movie was not very exciting. I felt like they could have tried harder and made it more extravagant and exciting.Overall, I thought this was a decent movie. It's not scary, but it is a fun movie to watch and it is entertaining. This movie has some good pros and some serious cons, but if you don't take it too seriously, you might appreciate the creativity it has to offer. It's an okay movie to pass the time if you're a horror fan.My rating: 6/10

Scott LeBrun It's inevitable with some veteran filmmakers that they'll have their share of hits and misses. Chalk this one up as a miss for horror master Wes Craven; while it's not without some good moments and assets, there's a decided lack of suspense, a poor script (surprising, coming from Craven), mostly inane characters, failed attempts at humour, and a lame killer.Too bad, because the set-up had some potential: a psychopath (Raul Esparza) with multiple personalities is caught by the cops, but in a ridiculous series of events, ends up vanishing, never to be seen again. On this same night, seven babies are born in the local hospital. Cut to 16 years later, and these now teen aged kids begin to be stalked and slaughtered by some unknown entity. Could it be the killer from long ago?Dialogue and situations are often too silly to be believed, including a scene with two students staging a dramatic presentation on condors for their biology class. The movie is much too chaotic to start with, with things happening much too quickly; there's no sense of a build. While it can't be said that there's no atmosphere at all (those shots of the bridge are pretty damn spooky), Craven fails to make this derivative material scary in any way. Much too much about the film is utterly generic.The young cast does what it can with their roles. Max Thieriot is our oddly named, sensitive hero "Bug", a dude who takes a hell of a lot of punishment before the film is over. John Magaro is his good buddy Alex. Nick Lashaway plays the obligatory bullying jock Brandon. Zena Grey has a more interesting part than the rest of them as the serious minded, religious Penelope. Emily Meade plays a bitchy character absurdly dubbed "Fang". Veterans in the cast include Jessica Hecht as May, Harris Yulin as Dr. Blake, and Dennis Boutsikaris as the principal.One definitely expects more from a filmmaker of Cravens' caliber. Hell, even "The Hills Have Eyes Part II" was more amusing than this. It doesn't come recommended, but completists may still want to see it for curiosity's sake.Three out of 10.

Alucard Venom I avoided this movie when it came to theaters, and decided to watch it tonight. I've heard it was bad, but I decided to check it out anyway since I still have respect for Wes Craven as filmmaker. In fact, I think his directing skills are very good, it's just that he either works with horrible script or tries too much to please the audiences. and "My Soul to Take" is no exception. It's probably the worst Craven movie to this day. Plot is basically the same as Elm Street 2, and that's interesting - Wes Craven borrowing heavily from a sequel to one of his movies, but MSTT suffers from trying to hard to be too smart and complex, instead of being a simple straight-forward slasher film. Characters are horrible, non of them are likable. They are either over- the-top stereotypes, or just boring. I really have no problem with stereotypical characters if they are interesting and done in witty way (several movies did that), but characters in MSTT had some of the worst mindblowing bad dialogues. You can do a really good drinking game, taking one shot each time one of the characters said dumber line then his preview one, or something stupid happens in the movie. This is what happens when man in his 60 tries to write a movie about teens in their 16. Also, there's a huge problem where one of the scenes does the whole exposition for the entire movie and what's going on. It felt too forced and exposition didn't came naturally. The villain is not very interesting, nor is he very intimidating like Craven's preview villains (Gang from HHE, Freddy or even Ghostface). You remember Coolio? Now imagine that Coolio is a movie character, made on Youtube movie quality with his face painted in white. There you have, Wes Craven's Ripper. His one liners are ridiculous (aren't those outdated anyway???) and he is arguably one of the dumbest slashers in history of slasher movies. Now, movie tries to be cute sometimes, but that's another thing.On the positive side: It's actually well directed. Craven still knows how to lead the story with his visuals and lure into false sense of security. It had one or two moments, but good direction didn't help to save horrible screenplay. There are few jump scares but they aren't overused and they never become annoyance (they also don't explode with loud musical orchestra in the background). Also, this movie has similar frames to the Craven's '80s movies, which I found rather interesting. Cinematography is still modern, but camera angles and composition looks like a movie made in late '80s-early-mid '90s. There's also "The Curse of the Wes Craven" moment here, which plagues this director from the beginning of his career - he doesn't know how to end movie properly.Soundtrack is forgettable.Note: There's only one funny scene where two lead characters do presentation of California Condor at their class. It's unnecessary scene and doesn't advance the plot in any way, but it's kinda funny and weird. It also feels like a random scene that's taken from some other movie and edited by mistake, which makes it even funnier. Overall, it's bad, it's pretty bad, probably one of the Craven's worst. Even worse then Scream 4, and that says a lot.