Horror Movies That Should Have Been Better: “Soul Survivors” (2001)

Not the worst movie ever, but it is still pretty damn bad is the 2001 film Soul Survivors.

The film tells the story of four friends: Cassie (Melissa Sagemiller), Sean (Casey Affleck), Annabelle (Eliza Dushku), and Matt (Wes Bentley), who after a night of partying end up getting in a car crash, Cassie’s boyfriend Sean ending up the only one dead. As time goes by, Cassie begins to struggle with Sean’s death, turning to her friends to help her cope. But when her friends begin acting strangely, and mysterious people begin turning up in their lives, Cassie’s only hope is in the hands of young priest (Luke Wilson), to help overcome the evil that’s transpiring.

The sad thing about Soul Survivors is that it had SO much potential. It had a decent premise, and a solid cast. But in the end the film ended up being a huge fricken mess. Many things were thrown into the plot that serve no purpose at all, the opening sequence being one of them. It seems like in every single scene there something thrown at us that make us want to scratch our heads thinking, “where the hell did that come from”? Although the twist tries to tie all of it up, it pretty much fails. Another thing is that by the end when the twist is starting to be revealed, the movie suffers from one too many fast takes to where it confuses the hell out of the viewer. Then finally when the twist is revealed you think, really, that’s it?

In what could have been a pretty good film, Soul Survivors suffers from being too fast paced, too much stacked on to it, all while being topped with an ending that was more than likely used as nice “surprise” but ultimately leaves the person puzzled, and only right after being revealed, the movie ends. I hate when this happens, when a movie has so much potential, but falls flat on it’s face. Granted we have a good cast who did a good job in it, but I personally felt they got screwed over with not being given more to work with.

–Cody Landman

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