Soulkeeper

I rented this movie cause I heard it wasn't bad and I gotta tell ya, it wasn't bad... it was surprisingly good! Alright, so it is kinda low budget (although the special effects looked on par with most studio flicks) but the acting, direction, suspense, monsters were convincing and intriguing enough to keep me more entertained than most stuff in theaters. It's a silly movie, but if you like throwback flicks that combine horror and comedy (like Fright Night and Evil Dead) this is right up your alley.

This is a very entertaining film which I only discovered through the now essenjtial combination of eBay and the IMDB.

The two leads, who remind me of a young John Ritter and a young Patrick Swayze, are likeable. They master that difficult trick of showing spiritual development whilst being funny. Their confessions are delightful: "I once owned a copy of Judas Priest's Unleashed in the East".

There'a great cast of support players including Brad Dourif, Robert Davi and Karen Black.

The direction is very smart, with plenty of good tricks. I liked the snaring of the heroes in their first assault on Simon Magus's mansion.

Simon Magus! That's a nice piece of Christian lore to firm up the story's background.

The plotting is neat with some of the less understandable interludes made clear at the film's resolution which had a surprisingly wistful quality.

I believe, after watching this, not only in 'the power of the human soul,' but in the capacity for man to inflict evil upon fellow man. 'Soulkeeper,' and let's not kid ourselves here, isn't great. I would say that it fits in more with the 'cringe-worthily unfortunate' category. It aims to be a comedy-action-horror and really isn't very good at any of them. The comedy routine that runs throughout the film is a collection of one-liners that mostly don't fire. Mostly they tend to be funny in spite of themselves rather than because they actually are. The horror had potential (despite the ludicrous monster on the cover of the box) but is wounded by a serious failure on the part of the film-writers to establish any tension or threat that the two heroes might be in danger (well, at least until the climactic battle scene at the end). 'Soulkeeper' was like watching a long episode of Scooby-doo without any of the charm. Yeah there is a monster, but do you really think the two clowning knuckleheads in this buddy film gone wrong are in serious trouble? If one of the two leads had broken out the scooby snacks when the going got tough (wait, it never got tough ... except for me) we would have been alright.

To be fair it has its moments. The "comedy" is grating because it tries too hard but there are times when you can't tell if it is being unintentionally funny or if there is great wit and a satirical mindset at work. Watching with friends was the only right decision I made about this movie because at least we could operate like a support group for trauma survivors. My favorite observation came when the two protagonists were in a cemetery and trapped in a night terror of sorts. The Robert Davi character snaps them out of it by hitting them with not one, but two buckets of water. My friend, bless him, wondered where he got the first, let alone second bucket of water? Genius or madness?!? YOU decide! hah hah hah!! ...late for therapy...

SOULKEEPER is about a pair of hapless thieves who accept a job from a Mr. Pascal (Brad Dourif), to steal a stone with magical properties.

It all sort of plays out like a mediocre episode of the old TALES FROM THE CRYPT from the early 1990's, full of blood, boobs, and the occasional laugh. The horror is humorous, and the humor is horrible. It seems pretty halfhearted as well.

MONSTER ALERT: If you're a monster fanatic and you want to see this movie because of the demon in the picture, then you'll want to know that it has about 4 seconds of screen time...

For a low brow, low budget horror film this one is actually better than usual. Some of the jokes are actually amusing, the performers are lively and the special effects are actually quite good. Not all the bits are successful - but how can you go wrong with Karen Black as a fortune teller/psychic/manicurist who projectile vomits all over co-star Rowland while levitating during a 'seance'. The cast is rounded out by Robert Davi, Brad Dourif, Tiny Lister and Deborah Gibson appearing ever-so-briefly as herself!