Soul Survivors 2001 Psychological Thriller Film
Directed by Stephen Carpenter and Stars Buffy's Elisha Dushku
Sep 10, 2009
After an accident that claims the life of her boyfriend Sean (Casey Affleck) college student Cassie (Melissa Sagemiller) starts to be haunted by visions of him and struggles to draw the line between her hallucinations and the real world.
Premise
A tragic car accident claims the life of Cassie’s soul-mate Sean; however, she survives the crash along with her friends Matt (Wes Bently) and Annabel (Elisha Dushku). They recover quickly but Cassie keeps seeing visions of Sean whilst apparently being stalked by the Grim Reaper. She may be trapped in a nightmare world in which the spirits are trying to claim her and only her dead boyfriend can save her.
Is Soul Survivors a ‘Psychological Thriller’?
Soul Survivors is a film that was obviously supposed to scare but it doesn’t. There are key members of the cast that have proven they can act, Casey Affleck, Elisha Dushku, and Wes Bentley have all gone on to do good things, unfortunately here all they seem to do is hang around Sagmiller as she slowly loses her marbles. Every actor has to start somewhere but this is one stepping stone the young cast should have sidestepped.
Basically Soul Survivors is a poor film.
The main hereon was probably supposed to be likable and invoke the audience’s sympathies as she slowly goes crackers; unfortunately, it is incredibly difficult to make a good film about someone’s slow deterioration into madness. The Shining is an excellent example of the concept done well, Jack Nicholson is gives a magnificent performance as the ordinary guy who is slowly going insane, Soul Survivors is about as far from the brilliance of The Shining as anyone could get.
Cassie seems to spend the entire film whining and wandering around sadly whilst everyone around her is just getting on with their lives. She pushes her friends away as they try to help her. Her deterioration is un-engaging and leaves the audience to simply wonder why they have not just switched the film off already. She spies on her friends and witnesses Annabel making out with another woman for some reason, and Matt returns to a Goth club (also for some reason) after swearing to her that he’d never go again.
Probably the moment when Cassie really loses any sympathy is when she is being pursued by three masked figures, and whilst running away, she leaves a brightly lit public street to race down a narrow and dark alleyway. Surely, someone who is that stupid deserves whatever fate they get, if they die then their idiotic genes are removed from the human gene pool forever, and humanity will be so much the better because of it.
Why Sean is still hanging around is also a mystery until the final ‘twist’ but by then the audience will be wondering why they are still watching.
1/10
Life is too short to waste precious time watching films like this.
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