SOUL SURVIVORS

Yet another identikit teen horror from the makers of I Know What You Did Last Summer, this generic offering is one of the least original films you’ll ever see, but for all its laziness, it’s far from the most incompetent or unwatchable thing on offer at present.

The plot’s fairly skimpy: after a car crash, teenager Cassie (Sagemiller) is devastated after surviving the crash which has killed her boyfriend (Affleck). Her loss is made all the more unbearable given that the couple were in the middle of a blazing row just prior to the accident. As a result, Cassie down-spirals into depression, despite the interventions of fellow survivors Matt (Bentley) and Annabel (Duzhku) who are anxious to help Cassie through her bereavement. Soon enough, however, Cassie finds that she is quite literally haunted – and it becomes abundantly clear that the characters are trapped in a limbo betwen life and death. Indeed, it transpires that they’re in danger of going to Hell, here represented as a kind of crappy disco-of-debauchery for goths (Take that, Fellini!)

While Soul Survivors does its best to keep everything lively and to the point at 85 minutes, it lacks the relentless grand-guignol of last year’s similarly-themed Final Destination and suffers in terms of momentum as a result. Equally, the ‘half-life’ scenario isn’t given the spooky suspenseful treatment quite as effectively as recent precursors have managed (Sixth Sense, The Others)

Nevertheless, Soul Survivors has its moments of teen terror, coupling horror with potential social embarassment, as when Melissa Sagemiller finds herself being ungraciously dragged under the water during swimming practise by a ghostly entity. Still, as with almost all recent teen-horror flicks, the most uncanny feeling one experiences during Soul Survivors is a deep sense of deja vu.