My Soul To Take
Rate Movie[Total: 11 Average: 2.8]
- Directed By: Wes Craven
- Written By: Wes Craven
- Release Date: October 8, 2010
- Domestic Distributor: Relativity (through Universal)
- Cast: Max Thieriot, John Magaro, Emily Meade
Box Office Info:
| Budget: $25 million | Financed by: Rogue |
|---|---|
| Domestic Box Office: $14,744,435 | Overseas Box Office: $6,231,967 |
“Until My Soul to Take I thought I kind of knew my audience, but there were some very vitriolic and nasty reviews and a general response that said ‘F-ck you, Wes Craven.’ I actually ran across things like ‘R.I.P. Wes Craven.’ I opened up a book on filmmakers and saw my name, and it said, ‘Won’t somebody please tell this guy to retire?’ There was a vein of viciousness that I had really never [experienced] before.”
—Wes Craven
The budget for My Soul To Take
was $25 million and it was financed by Rogue, the genre branch of Focus, which was owned by Universal.
Wes Craven’s film finished filming in mid 2008 with an October 2009 release planned. In January 2009, Universal sold off Rogue to Relativity Media for $150 million, as Relativity was making the leap from co-financier of movies to a fully functional distributor. They inherited My Soul To Take and did not even bother to watch the completed movie for over three months. Once Relativity execs got around to the picture, they issued re-shoots in mid 2009 and then slapped a pointless 3D conversion on the film. My Soul To Take was pushed back to October 8, 2010.
My Soul To Take was not tracking well going into release and it bowed against Life As We Know It and Secretariat. The movie also opened into a market saturated with horror entries — two of which were released the weekend before, Case 39 and Let Me In (also distributed by Relativity) and both did poor business. It was incomprehensible why Relativity would pit two of their horror releases against each other.
Relativity did not screen the movie for critics and at the time of release, it posted the worst opening for a 3D film playing in over 1,500 theaters, pulling in just $6,842,220 — placing #5 for the weekend led by the holdover The Social Network (also co-financed by Relativity). 86% of the opening gross was from price gouging 3D ticket sales. Audiences gave My Soul To Take a hateful D cinemascore and it sank 53.7% in its second weekend to $3,170,310 and was pulled from release after only four weeks. The domestic run closed with just $14,744,435. Relativity would see returned about $8 million after theaters take their percentage of the gross, which would leave much of the P&A costs in the red.
After selling off Rogue, Universal agreed to distribute the existing Rogue titles ready for release in overseas markets and they would collect a 10% distribution fee. Universal dumped My Soul To Take in a small release in Germany and UPI (Universal and Paramount joint distribution arm) released in Spain, Singapore and Malaysia to about $400k total from those four territories. The film made the majority of its poor $6.2 million offshore gross from $4.2 million in Russia and it went straight to video in most markets.
Every bit of vitriol that Craven received for this abhorrently written, terribly acted, cringe-worthy pile if dogshit was well-deserved.
I remember sitting down to watch this really wanting to watch a horror movie and what I got was this instead. If I had to describe the style and tone of this movie to someone, I’d tell them to imagine some mid-90s afternoon Goose Bumps/Erie Indiana “spooky” show for little children, except with worse acting, a less belivable plot and characters, and some of the worst dialogue ever committed to film.