My Soul to Take

A quarter-century after inventing Freddy Krueger and 14 years after Scream, his ironic take on the slasher genre he helped create, writer-director Wes Craven is back to carve up some more teenagers. My Soul To Take concerns a serial killer with multiple personalities who vows to slaughter the seven kids born on the night of his apparent death. Flash forward 16 years and a group of youngsters distinguished chiefly by one-word characterizations like “religious” and “blind” and “Asian” start getting the business end of a very big knife. Craven should know better than anyone that audiences don’t fall for the same stalker film tricks anymore, but all he delivers here are the usual jump-out jolts, gore and a killer unlikely to haunt anyone’s nightmares. How the master has fallen. –Matt Semansky