Hey Jude!

sol1218

**MAJOR SPOILERS** The movie "Soul Survivor" comes across like a cross between "Caranvil of Souls" and "Jacob's Ladder" without the both surprising and shocking endings of the two ghostly thrillers.

Cassie, Melissa Sagermiller, in trying to break off her relationship with her boyfriend Matt, Wes Bentley, gives him a good-by kiss which her now boyfriend and, what turned out to be, soul-mate Sean, Casey Affleck, notices. Mad at Cassie for two-timing him which Sean suspect her of doing he refuse to have anything to do with, or even talk to, her on the drive back to their dorms at Middletown Collage.

With Matt and his new girlfriend Anna,Eliza Dushku, in the back seat Cassie loses control of the car and goes off the road killing her disgruntled boyfriend Sean. Recovering from both the accident and Sean's death Cassie soon starts to have hallucinations of Sean manifesting himself to her as a ghostly spirit somehow directing her to came back to him in the world of the dead! While all this is going on Cassie is constantly being stalked and terrorized by this masked lunatic, Carl Paoli, that only she and one else sees!

Going to see the collage's Catholic Priest Father Jude, Luke Wilson, Cassie is told to keep the faith and let things just happen and the truth of what's happening to her will guide Cassie back to both God and sanity. It later turns out that Father Jude is anything but who he says he is in that he hasn't worked at Middletown Collage, much less lived there, since 1981!

It's not that much of a secret to what Cassie find herself in since it's been done, in movies like "Carnival of Souls" and "Jacob's Ladder", many times before. It's the syrupy feel-good ending that blows you away in its trying to make everything right in the film which in fact screws everything up instead!

Totally clueless to what's happening all around her Cassie starts to lose her mind feeling that she's somehow suffering from server brain damage resulting from the car accident that she's a survivor of. It's takes almost the entire movie for Cassie with the help of Matt & Anna, as well as Father Jude, to finally "get it"! But by then all she, as well as us watching the film, got was a confusing triple-twist ending and slitting migraine headache.

Not much of a horror suspense movie "Soul Survivor" telegraphers every surprise and twist, with the exception of its final ending, in it far in advance before it ever even starts. As for the dead and ghostly Sean he comes across with his rosy cheeks and surf-boy tan more alive then anyone that's actually alive in the movie!

score 5/10

sol1218 22 May 2008

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1878060/