YMMV / Soultaker

• Awesome Music: "Happy Today" by The Kevin Danzig Band is actually pretty good, as is "Somewhere in Paradise" by Karen Lawrence.
• Ending Fatigue: Damn, that hospital climax just does not want to end. It even keeps cutting to a clock after the Celestial Deadline passes. "The clock doesn't figure at all, stop showing the clock! You spent that nickel already!"
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Brad, at least after he becomes a soultaker, becomes more competent, witty and likeable than he was when he was alive. He does more useful things for the protagonists than they do.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: Natalie and Zach get a second chance at life! But its not clear what will happen to them when they eventually die for real - the Angel of Death implies their souls are lost forever, which could well suggest they can't even access the afterlife because they technically cheated (and possibly screwed Brad over too by convincing him to abandon his post and give Natalie and Zach the means to put their souls back.)
• Fridge Logic: The Soultaker is Immune to Bullets... even though he can be visibly injured.
  • The bigger one is how Zach ends up with Natalie's soul ring in his (living) hand after reviving himself. I believe the MST3K crew said: "whoa movie, huddle-up in the middle here, let's work this out..."
  • It's shown that the souls of deceased people who aren't reaped can affect the physical world. Why didn't any of them, let alone Zach, pick up a pen and write something in front of someone?
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Already deceased people taking the souls of someone who is going to die in a short time? That sounds familiar...
• Ho Yay: Estevez-Soultaker-as-Mrs.-McMillan peeping at Natalie as she gets ready for her bath.
• Narm:
  • Done by a camera shot, interestingly. In the scene where Natalie is trapped in the elevator with the Estevez soultaker, the camera slowly rotates whenever she is on-screen. At first the viewer might think they're trying for a Dutch Angle effect, but it keeps turning and turning until eventually she's completely upside-down. It just ends up looking silly.
  • "There is no Stairway to Heaven."
  • The infamous "Mom-peeping-on-Natalie" scene, even if it is the Soultaker in disguise.
• So Bad, It's Good: A borderline case. Despite the unimpressive effects due to its small budget and a few glaring holes in the plot, it's actually a pretty decent concept for a movie and overall competently made.
• Squick: The Estevez reaper ogles at the undressed heroine while he's disguised as her mother.
• Tear Jerker: Natalie begging her parents not to pull the plug on her body because she wants to live can easily hit home for any parent who has lost a child.
• The Un-Twist: Natalie's mom is the Estevez reaper in disguise; the first hint of this is when she can see the characters' 'souls' when no one else can. This trope is largely dependent upon the MST3K treatment because, due to the usual level of quality featured on the show, viewers might have assumed it was just an oversight in the script.

---