“6 Souls” is a film that I’ve waiting to see for a while, but haven’t had the time to see it. What drew me to this film was the fact that it had an interesting trailer and the film stars Julianne Moore, the star of such films as “Magnolia”, “Children of Men” and most recently “Game Change”.
The film follows Doctor Cara Harding (Julianne Moore), a person whose faith in god was shaken, after the death of her husband. She attempts to move on, when she is introduced to Adam (Johnathan Rhys Meyers), a patient who has multiple personalities and displays physical characteristics of his other victims. She rapidly finds out that those personalities are some of her new client’s past victims. As she digs deeper into her client’s past, she and those around her becomes closer to becoming his next victims. The film also co-stars Jeffery Demunn (The Walking Dead) and Francis Conroy (American Horror Story).
This was one of those films, where I felt very disappointed because I was really hoping that this would be entertaining. This looked like a good film on paper. It had a good cast plus I really liked Marlind & Stein’s last film “Underworld: Awakening”. Still that wasn’t enough to help me like this film, as this was a very boring film from start to finish.
One of the main reasons was the direction. This film felt like a three and a half hour film, as Marlind and Stein’s direction was very flat and lifeless. There was no energy to most of the scenes. You can’t have that with a film like this. If you’re not entertained by the way the scenes work through the direction, then you’re sitting there desperately waiting for the film to end. It felt more like a television film than theatrical film. The acting wasn’t better neither. The performances felt like had no personality to them. Marlind and Stein doesn’t do anything to make the characters interesting, instead it was hard watching the performances especially Julianne Moore. Her performance was very lifeless, as I didn’t care about her character. Maybe it had to do with the horrible screenplay, but still I was waiting for some life in the character. Sadly. I didn’t see that at any time in her performance.
The other thing that I didn’t like about the production aspect was the editing. I know this is not fully both of the director’s fault, but this was one of the film’s major problems. There is no reason why this film needed a 112 minute running time. It felt like most of the scenes went on too long or should’ve been cut. It made the experience much more painful to watch and it made the film feel longer than it should’ve been.
The screenplay was even worse than the direction. Michael Cooney’s screenplay was very lifeless from start to finish. One of the reasons was his characters. All of the film’s character had no personality whatsoever. Cooney doesn’t do anything to make sure that the characters are interesting. Instead, there was a bunch of characters playing only one note. When that happens, the characters are very dull and makes you not care about anything. The other thing that I hated about it was the fact the story was very boring. Maybe it was the story goes in too many different directions or that there wasn’t enough development of the character, but it wasn’t interested. It hurt this film in a big way, as this was one of the hardest to sit through this year.
This is one of the worst film that I’ve seen this year by far. “6 Souls” is a was very dull film with lifeless direction and running time that made me felt like I was watching a three and a half hour film.
Review Rating: One Star.
