My Soul to Take

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...an unusually bright poster for a slasher movie. I mean, SERIOUSLY, JUST LOOK AT IT!!!

My Soul To Take is a 2010 horror movie directed by Wes Craven.

As legend has it, a serial killer, the Ripper, will return to the quaint town of Riverton to murder the seven children that were born the night he allegedly died. Sixteen years after his death, members of the community begin to disappear. All the teens know the Ripper to be dead, but they hold the belief that his soul may have reincarnated into one of their bodies, forcing them to discover who among them may be the killer. Only one of the teenagers knows the answer. Adam "Bug" Heller was supposed to die on the bloody night his father went insane. Unaware of his father's terrifying crimes, Bug has been plagued by nightmares since he was a baby. But if Bug hopes to save his friends from the Ripper, he must face an evil that won't rest... until the Ripper finishes the job it began the day Bug was born.

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Tropes used in My Soul to Take include:

• Abusive Parents: Alex's stepfather.
• Adults Are Useless: A bit of an Author Tract for Wes Craven, eh?
• Agent Mulder: Jeanne-Baptiste (the black chick who got her throat sliced) during the first murders. She flips with Paterson 16 years later and takes the Agent Scully spot, and even lampshades it.
• Agent Scully: Paterson starts off as this, and then becomes the Agent Mulder for no apparent reason.
• Alpha Bitch: Fang, a super senior, has the entire student body under her thumb.
• Animal Motifs
• Asshole Victim: Brandon: he gets a girl pregnant by manipulating her, bullies Bug and Alex, and it's a good bet he was going to rape Brittany in the woods before The Ripper catches up with them.
• Bait and Switch:

May: (noticing dirt and leaves on his sweater) "Did you fall?" Bug: "I buried a friend... my condor costume."

• Black Dude Dies First: Averted with Jerome. Unless you count The Ripper, he's the last of the victims to die.
• Calling the Old Man Out
• Chekhov's Gun: The biggest knife in the kitchen.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Leah, complete with Freudian Excuse.
• Death by Genre Savviness: Jay, while frantically screaming how he "spit in the river!" It didn't help.
• Developing Doomed Characters
• Disability Superpower: Averted with Jerome. He simply uses standard blindness techniques for mobility and identification.
• Evil Gloating: The Ripper, naturally.
• Expy: Comparisons to the first Nightmare on Elm Street (and the second, considering stuff like the possession aspect and the main character being a boy) were inevitable.
• Fauxshadow: Careful attention is paid in the beginning to Leah's creepy reaction to the murders, but nothing actually comes of it. She just ends up an angry, maladjusted girl, and is not The Ripper.
• Final Boy: Bug.
• The Fundamentalist: Penelope.
• Genre Savvy: The whole town knew The Ripper would come back some day, and a few knew how souls worked.
• Harassing Phone Call
• I Just Knew: Bug, when he states that Brittany was with Brandon in the woods. Their souls told him, because they had just died and their souls joined with Bug.
• I See Dead People: Bug sees Jay floating in the river and Penelope pointing out The Ripper's knife, both in a mirror.
• Jerk Jock: Brandon, and even he admits it. Interestingly, he also doubles as The Dragon for Fang in her rule over the high school.
• Knife Nut
• Lust Object: Brittany, for Brandon. He's none too subtle about it either.
• Meaningful Echo: Fang's ratings of physical pain. Pretty much anything exchanged between Bug and Alex, but most notably: "It feels fucking great."
• Motif: There are animal motifs, religious motifs, and mirror motifs.
• Ms. Exposition: Jeanne-Baptiste, whose only purpose as a character is to explain how some souls are just too evil to stay dead.
• Never Found the Body: The set-up. Unusually, it was confirmed that the Ripper did indeed die...but, we never found out what happened to his body.
• Never Trust a Trailer: Not as bad as most, but there was some stuff shown out of context, particularly scenes from near the beginning of the movie that took place 16 years prior to the main events (most notably a news broadcast). There are a couple clips shot just for the trailer as well.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Leah kicks the crap out of Bug.
• The Not-Secret: Everyone knew about Bug's father but the Riverton Seven... except Alex, who has the soul of The Ripper inside him.
• Obfuscating Disability: Jerome, who (although legitimately blind) pretends he "accidentally" went into the girls' bathroom instead of the boys' to support a recon mission for Bug and Alex.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Used copiously by The Ripper, but subverted once.

Abel: (about to shoot a paramedic) "This is for you, you cunt!" Paterson: (shoots Abel) "That's for shut the fuck up!"

• Promotion to Parent: Bug and Leah's aunt took care of them after their mother died; Bug actually calls her "Mom", and up until a certain point believes she's the one who gave birth to him.
• Red Herring: We see a lot of Bug's schizophrenic tendencies and his inexplicable proficiency with the folding blade, setting him up as The Ripper, but his odd behavior turns out to be something else entirely.
• Slashed Throat
• Scare Chord: But of course.
• Self-Made Orphan: At the very end, we're told Alex murdered his abusive stepfather. Alex himself is not around by then, but...
• Ship Sinking: An in-universe example: Fang makes sure Brittany doesn't get any ideas about hooking up with Bug by insisting that Brandon is a better match for her, even though Brittany's reaction implies she might have a crush on Bug. May also tries to do this with Bug by saying Brittany is a little too "sophisticated" for him. It doesn't really matter in the end, as Brittany gets gutted.
• Split Personality: The Riverton Ripper. One of them is evil.
  • Actually, the majority of the movie (after the opening) is arguably an inversion of this.
• Spoiler Opening: Sort of. In the beginning when Jay is killed, you can hear him say "Alex."
• Stalker with a Crush: Very minor example. Alex gets Bug to go along with his "recon mission" by convincing him that he'll get to hear what Brittany thinks of him. So Bug plants his cell phone in the girls' bathroom and the two listen in on the conversation.
• Stupid Evil: Yeah, Ripper, try to pin the murders of 6 people, including a cop on a blind kid. I'm sure nobody will question that.
• Teens Are Monsters: Riverton's high school is rife with bullying, drug use and general jerkassery. No authority figure seems to be able to put a stop to it.
• They're Called "Personal Issues" for a Reason: Leah torments Bug out of resentment for their past, and never says a thing about it until he lays down an Armor-Piercing Question. She confesses, and flies into a rage afterwards by destroying a dollhouse with a guitar.
• Token Wholesome: Played with: fervent Christian girl Penelope is also the school' pariah, although - at times - she proves to be far less naive than she looks, as when she uses the fact Brandon got a schoolmate pregnant as temporary leverage against him.

"She's in my prayer group. Duh."

• Trailers Always Spoil: Bug's father was the killer, and there is a plotline about whether or not his father's spirit is controlling him. However, a brief shot from the trailer clearly shows him fighting the killer, meaning it's someone else.
• Unusual Euphemism: "Crotch dog."
• We Need a Distraction: Fang instructs Brittany to do this to a security officer so Brandon can punch Bug and Alex.
• What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic: Arguably the Animal Motif of the condor. The idea established at the end seems to be the other kids' souls were going to Bug because he's the condor and "eats death". Whether that's sufficient is up to you.
  • The slash marks in Bug's shirt are diagonal down the shoulder blades, exactly where a set of angel wings would be.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: We never found out if Fang was telling the truth about Bug killing people before the start of the movie.
  • Why was "Vengeance" etched into the blade of the Ripper's knife? What was he getting vengeance for? Why was he killing people at all?