'Soul Survivors' feels a bit like a death march

Soul Survivors (2001)
Starring: Melissa Sagemiller, Wes Bentley, Casey Affleck, Eliza Dushku, Luke WIlson, and Angela Featherstone
Director: Stephen Carpenter
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

College freshman Cassie (Sagemiller) survives an accident that kills her boyfriend (Affleck), but soon finds the world transforming strangely around her. Maybe Cassie didn't survive at all... maybe Cassie is in Purgatory and being pulled toward Hell by demons posing as her friends? Or maybe Cassie is just out of her mind?



"Soul Survivors" is one of those movies that sets out to put the viewer in the place of a central character for whom life increasingly becomes a nightmare where it's impossible to tell what's real and what's imagined... or if anything it real. It's a time-honored and tested horror movie and thriller convention, and when it's done well, it leads to movies I like very much.

Unfortunately, it's not done well in this film. It starts out spooky and struggles to evolve into creepy or scary, but instead becomes tedious and repetitious. Too many flat performances and too many build-ups that don't pay off with anything will have most viewers not caring one bit whether Cassie is being gas-lighted, whether she's hallucinating while in a coma, or whether she's dead and in Hell already. Most viewers will simply be too bored to care--it may just be an hour and a half long, but it feels like twice that as you are stilling through it.

If you're looking for a movie with good-looking 20-somethings posing and delivering lines while hitting their marks, you might like "Soul Survivors" more than I did. But if you're looking for a horror movie, or even a good psychological thriller, take a pass.

'Open Graves' is not worth your time

Open Graves (2009)
Starring: Mike Vogel, Eliza Dushku, Ethan Rains, Lindsay Caroline Robba, Naike Rivelli, and Gary Piquer
Director: Álvaro de Armiñán
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

A group of 20-somethings (Dushku, Rains, Rivelli, Robba, and Vogel) working and surfing in Spain fall victim to a powerful and deadly curse after they play a board game made from the bones of a witch.

If you've seen the classic movie "Jumanji", you know the basic premise of this film. You've also seen that premise used far more effectively. Heck, you've even seen more intense and frightening scenes than what you'll get in this horror movie.

"Open Graves" features a script so weak and predictable that I wonder why it was made as an R-rated film. Anyone who has seen even one other film featuring a cursed object will be able to guess where the film is going, up to and including the ending, so the only audience who would have enjoyed this picture would have been young kids. Everyone else will grow increasingly bored as this movie unfolds and brings nothing new. (There is a creepy little twist involving Eliza Dushku's character toward the end of the film, but it's so minor so as to be a reach for me to even mention it as a positive aspect of the film. I suppose the subplot involving a police detective with a dark agenda is also unpredictable... but only because it ends without any particular resolution. Not a Good Thing.)

Of course, it doesn't help the overall weakness of the material that the actors appear to have been cast mostly for their good looks than their talent. They add more attractiveness to this already beautiful-looking film, but they ultimately also help emphasize the emptiness and unoriginality of the script, because there is little or no life to their characters. The exception to that general statement are Dushku and Vogel, who bring enough charisma to their characters that we care a little about what will happen to them... but for all but the most entertainment-starved captive audience that's not enough to make it feel like watching this film was time well spent.

Saturday Scream Queen: Eliza Dushku

Born in 1980, Eliza Dushku made her film debut at age 12, and she has been busy ever since. As the world was panicking over Y2K, Dushku successfully made the transition from child actress to simply actress with leading and supporting roles in a variety of television series and films, with an emphasis on dark thrillers and horror.

Aside from playing then popular bad-girl vampire hunter Faith on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel," and starring roles in the short-lived series series "Tru Calling" and "Doll House," Dushku has been featured in hakf a dozannumehorror films, such as "Soul Survivor", "Wrong Turn", "Locked In", and "Open Graves". Dushku has also leant her distinctive voice to numerous computer games and animated features, most recently voicing Catwoman in the "Batman: Year One" animated feature.

Dushku has several projects in various stages of development, with the most prominent of these being slated part in "Ghostbusters III".