[[quoteright:302:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/My_Soul_To_Take_5192.jpg]]

''My Soul to Take'' is a 2010 horror movie from Creator/WesCraven, being his first since ''Film/WesCravensNewNightmare'' that he wrote, produced and directed.

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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!!''My Soul to Take'' provides examples of:

* AbusiveParents: Alex's stepfather.
* AdultsAreUseless: A bit of an AuthorTract for [[Creator/WesCraven Wes Craven]], eh?
* AgentMulder: Jeanne-Baptiste during the first murders. She flips with Paterson 16 years later and takes the [[AgentScully Agent Scully]] spot, and even [[LampshadeHanging lampshades]] it.
* AgentScully: Paterson starts off as this, and then becomes the [[AgentMulder Agent Mulder]] for no apparent reason.
* AxCrazy: The Ripper is a complete psychotic whose only seeming goal is to kill as many people as he can.
* AlphaBitch: Fang, a super senior, has the entire student body under her thumb.
* AnimalMotifs
* BaitAndSwitch:
-->'''May:''' (''noticing dirt and leaves on his sweater'') "Did you fall?"
-->'''Bug:''' "I buried a friend... my condor costume."
* BettyAndVeronica: Bug is infatuated with Brittany, a BetaBitch who is involved in petty crimes and getting Bug beaten up by her boyfriend, but gets several PetTheDog moments and seems to like Bug back. In the meantime, Penelope TheFundamentalist seems to have a crush on Bug that she can't quite voice and protects him from being bullied by Brittany and her friends. [[spoiler:None of this amounts to anything, as both of them are killed by the SerialKiller, while Bug survives.]]
* BlackDudeDiesFirst: [[spoiler:Averted with Jerome. Unless you count The Ripper, he's the last of the victims to die]].
** However, [[spoiler:the first of the seven to die is Jay, the only other member of the group to be of an ethnic minority.]]
* CallingTheOldManOut
* ChekhovsGun: The biggest knife in the kitchen.
* DarkAndTroubledPast: Leah, complete with [[FreudianExcuse Freudian Excuse]].
* DecoyProtagonist: Patterson, the police detective investigating the murders, [[spoiler: [[DroppedABridgeOnHim before getting suddenly murdered by the Riverton Ripper at the climax]]]].
* DevelopingDoomedCharacters
* DisabilitySuperpower: Averted with Jerome. He simply uses standard blindness techniques for mobility and identification.
* EvilGloating: The Ripper, naturally.
* EverybodyKnewAlready: Everyone knew about [[spoiler:Bug's father]] but the Riverton Seven... [[spoiler:except Alex, who has the soul of The Ripper inside him]].
* {{Expy}}: Comparisons to the first ''Film/ANightmareOnElmStreet1984'' (and [[Film/ANightmareOnElmStreetPart2FreddysRevenge the second]], considering stuff like the possession aspect and the main character being a boy) were inevitable.
** Creator/FrankGrillo's police detective character, Patterson, complete with brown trench coat and somewhat raspy and gruff voice, loosely resembles the late Peter Falk's famed television character Series/{{Columbo}} (which is a property of Creator/{{Universal}}, whose subsidiary Rogue Pictures distributed this film).
* ExtremelyShortTimespan: Besides the DistantPrologue and less than a minute of the following scene (where characters are counting down to midnight) the whole film takes place in the sixteenth anniversary of the events of the prologue.
* {{Fauxshadow}}: [[spoiler: 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]].
* TheFundamentalist: Downplayed with the devoutly religious Penelope. She includes foreign missionaries in her daily prayer and gives a speech to Brandon about how he is going to burn in Hell for getting a younger girl pregnant and bullying Bug, but she is also deliberately making a scene so that Brandon will have to stop hitting Bug and is kind and supportive to the girl Brandon impregnated.
* {{Gaslighting}}: [[spoiler:during the climax, the possessed Alex struggles hard to make Bug think he is schizophrenic and the killer]].
* HarassingPhoneCall
* HeelFaceDoorSlam: [[spoiler:Brandon dies right after he tries to apologize to Brittany for his lecherous JerkJock and BarbaricBully behavior and indicates some love for his unborn child with Melanie Pratt]].
* IJustKnew: Bug, when he states that Brittany was with Brandon in the woods. [[spoiler:Their souls told him, because they had just died and their souls joined with Bug]].
* ISeeDeadPeople: Bug sees [[spoiler:Jay floating in the river]] and [[spoiler:Penelope pointing out The Ripper's knife]], both in a mirror.
* JerkJock: Brandon, and even he admits it. Interestingly, he also doubles as [[TheDragon The Dragon]] for Fang in her rule over the high school.
* LustObject: Brittany is aon object of desire for Brandon and Bug. They are none too subtle about it either.
* MeaningfulEcho: Fang's ratings of physical pain. Pretty much anything exchanged between Bug and Alex, but most notably: "It feels fucking great."
* {{Motifs}}: There are animal motifs, religious motifs, and mirror motifs.
* MsExposition: Jeanne-Baptiste, whose only purpose as a character is to explain how some souls are just too evil to stay dead.
* NeverFoundTheBody: The set-up. Unusually, [[spoiler: it was confirmed that the Ripper did indeed die...but, we never found out [[WhatHappenedToTheMouse what happened to his body]]]].
* NeverTrustATrailer: 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.
* NoHoldsBarredBeatdown: Leah kicks the crap out of Bug.
* ObfuscatingDisability: 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.
* PlotHole: [[spoiler:Alex plans to frame Jerome for the killings and get away with it.]] So... how exactly did he plan [[spoiler:to convince people that ''a blind guy'' committed so many murders without being caught?]]
* PreMortemOneLiner: Used copiously by The Ripper, but subverted once.
-->[[spoiler:'''Abel:''' (''about to shoot a paramedic'')]] "This is for you, you cunt!"
-->[[spoiler:'''Paterson:''' (''shoots Abel'')]] "That's for shut the fuck up!"
* PromotionToParent: [[spoiler: 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.]]
* RedHerring: [[spoiler: 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]].
* ScareChord: But of course.
* ShipSinking: 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. [[spoiler:It doesn't really matter in the end, as Brittany gets gutted]].
* SiblingYinYang: Both Jerome and [[spoiler:Bug himself]] are snarky, sensitive, helpful boys whose sisters are aggressive GirlPosse {{Jerkass}}es.
* SplitPersonality: The Riverton Ripper. One of them [[GollumMadeMeDoIt is evil]].
** Actually, the majority of the movie (after the opening) is arguably an [[InvertedTrope inversion]] of this.
* SpoilerOpening: Sort of. [[spoiler: In the beginning when Jay is killed, you can hear him say "Alex."]]
* StalkerWithACrush: 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.
* StupidEvil: Yeah, Ripper, try to pin the murders of 6 people, [[spoiler: including a cop]] on a [[spoiler: blind kid]]. I'm sure nobody will question that.
* TeensAreMonsters: Riverton's high school is rife with bullying, drug use and [[CrapsackWorld general jerkassery]]. No authority figure seems to be able to put a stop to it.
* TeensLoveShopping: In a rare PetTheDog moment, BetaBitch Brittany tells Bug that shopping helps calm her down when she is scared or angry and suggests he try the same thing.
* TheyreCalledPersonalIssuesForAReason: Leah torments Bug out of resentment for their past, and never says a thing about it until he lays down an [[ArmorPiercingQuestion Armor Piercing Question]]. She confesses, and flies into a rage afterwards by destroying a dollhouse with a guitar.
* TokenWholesome: 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 [[spoiler: she uses the fact Brandon got a schoolmate pregnant as temporary leverage against him]].
--> "She's in my prayer group. ''Duh''."
* TrailersAlwaysSpoil: [[spoiler: 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.]]
* UnusualEuphemism: "Crotch dog."
* WeNeedADistraction: Fang instructs Brittany to do this to a security officer so Brandon can punch Bug and Alex.
* WhamShot: An eagle-eyed viewer will probably realize that [[spoiler:Bug is the son of Abel Plenkov]] as soon as Plenkov’s sister-in-law May appears in the present scenes, [[spoiler:raising Bug]]. However, when [[spoiler:AlphaBitch Fang comes down from her room to interrupt a conversation between May and Bug, TheReveal that Fang is Bug’s sister and Plenkov’s daughter Leah]], is much more abrupt and startling.
* WhatHappenedToTheMouse:
** We never found out if Fang was telling the truth about [[spoiler: Bug killing people before the start of the movie]].
*** It's explained in a deleted scene.
** 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?
** [[spoiler:Right before Penelope is attacked, she sees Melanie is missing from where they were sitting and calls out her name in worry. It never is explained where Melanie went, although the lack of a corpse in the gym and multiple lines of dialogue describing how many people have died in the killing spree at least mean that she wasn’t killed too]].
** In the opening scene, [[spoiler:seven babies have been born just before the ambulance crash, and there is a lot of talk about the Riverton Seven later in the film. However, it is implied that no one knew about Bug’s birth, when the hospital nurses mention the seven births, meaning there might have been eight babies born on the day Plenkov died, with one being unaccounted for during the events of the film]].
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