MY SOUL TO TAKE (2010): Contents of Wes Craven's sock drawer

Strange that a director as well-established and acclaimed as Wes Craven would decide to slum it and make an unironic slasher flick, but that's what he's done here.  My Soul to Take is a return to his roots, a mashup of some themes from A Nightmare on Elm Street with the dead-teenager motif pioneered by Friday the 13th.  It's the kind of maddeningly creative, sloppy yet irresistible mess that used to be Craven's forte during the '80s, and it's the most underrated shocker from this director since, well, Shocker.

It has everything.  The return of the long-dormant serial killer.  The nightmares that blend with real life.  The nerd who gets with the popular girl.  And this time the killer may have passed his soul into one of the children who was born on the day he died.  The "Riverton Ripper" was killed sixteen years ago to the day, coincidentally the day seven Riverton kids were born.  Not so coincidentally, the kids all turn sixteen and the killings begin again.  No one knows if it's a copycat, or if the Ripper isn't dead, or if it's simply the soul of the killer that's alive.  Suspicion falls on Bug (Max Thieriot), a local spaz who's one of the Riverton Seven, and has been acting strange lately.