The supernatural/serial killer thriller My Soul to Take marks Wes Craven's first feature as writer and director since 1994's inventive New Nightmare, and at first blush, it finds him in familiar territory. Here again, as in his iconic Nightmare on Elm Street series, his focus is a vicious murderer who appears to continue his crime spree from beyond the grave, and who concentrates his attention on a group of teens connected to his original crimes (seven of them were born on the night he died). As the seven meet a gruesome end, one boy (Max Thieriot) becomes a likely suspect for the killings--is he possessed by the spirit of the long-dead maniac, or has he picked up where "The Riverton Ripper" left off? The answer, unfortunately, is not worth the time required to piece together the clues; Craven's script is dreadfully leaden, especially in regard to dialogue, and cobbles together disparate elements from his previous works and a crazy quilt of religious tenets to produce a final product rendered suspense-free by its incoherence. The youthful cast is unremarkable, and the 3-D effects are entirely superfluous; in short, My Soul to Take is a place marker for Craven fans until the release of Scream 4.