5 Souls (2013)

Absolutely Fantastic

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

This is an odd film that is an existential mystery. Noah (Ian Bohen) finds himself in a coma talking to the angel of death (Steven Schub). He cuts a deal. He lives if he kills 5 people. This aspect reminded me a little of the film "Subliminal."In a subplot Sam (Steve Bacic) and Sara (Allison McAtee) are investigating a collapsed building. The two subplots tie together about an hour into the film.This is one of those films that is well made for the genre. It kept me interested, yet frustrated at the lack of clues. The ending was interesting but was a bit preachy. It is more of an experimental indie style film that is not for everyone. Don't expect a major league horror film as depicted on the cover.Parental Guide: F-bomb, sex, brief rear nudity (Kristina Anapau). Allison McAtee- bra/panties/side breast.

If I could give it less than 1 star, I would. This film was so irritatingly bad, I've opened this account to warn you all. It's bad on every level, the acting is atrocious and the script has no imagination either. Every character seems to want the film to be based on them, with you ending up hating every single one of them. Watching a horror is always easy, even if it's corny, you can bare it because of the gore and and clichés, but this had none of that, it was tacky beyond belief. Over acted and under budget, the plot is more clear in the trailer, and then it just suddenly ends, to hit home even more than that, you find out that 60% of the scenes were completely pointless. Spare yourself wasting your time.

So the films starts with a little bit of back story about the main characters. These are mostly uninteresting clichés (e.g. bad ass ex-cop with a past out for revenge). Also a few brief clips, news reports etc to explain the disaster all the events are tied to.The "disgraced architect" then meets two characters which, from the get go, clearly represent good and evil. It's not mystified whatsoever. The good character is passive, blind, and talks like a nun (also has tacky eye glitter, which I think is meant to make her look angelic?) and the evil character reveals himself with some pretty mild comments about having been an angel "once upon a time" and a little poltergeist act. Doesn't take a genius to work out who he is in short time. The main premise is that the disgraced architect has to kill 5 people designated by the evil character to get his life back. These people who he kills then come back in poor zombie make up to show him what it feels like to be them (which made me think there would be a karma type theme). The good character tries to stop him from doing these things rather gingerly and unconvincingly. At no point in the film did I relate or feel sorry for the disgraced architect, even though it seemed he was the main character. He was given loads of chances for the viewer to like him but he turned out to be a tool. In the end he chooses the path which we are lead to believe is evil and it appears that rather than "living in darkness" he gets off Scott free and continues the evil characters legacy of killing folks by killing the evil character. I'm sure that most of the concepts in this made sense in someone's head but it's a bit unclear on film. I felt like the characters were pieced together from 80s films. And overall it felt incomplete because the disgraced architect got away with everything with little to no sign of any consequence (which ruined the whole good and bad contrast and the karma theme).If you're looking for something to kill time then this will just about keep your attention. Don't expect some grand philosophical works or a horror. It is neither.