Review by paul_haakonsen

I remember my brother having this 1998 movie on VHS back in the day, but oddly enough I never got around to watching the movie before now in 2022. Why? Well, I never did really find the movie's cover all that interesting, so I never took it upon myself to sit down and watch it.

Then in 2022, I had the chance to do so, and I figured well since it said "Wes Craven presents" on the movie's cover, then I might actually have missed out on something, so I opted to give "Carnival of Souls" a chance.

Turns out that I hadn't been missing out on anything grand here. The storyline told in "Carnival of Souls", as written by Adam Grossman, was just so-so. I mean, sure it was archetypical late 1990s, or at least had that particular vibe to it. But the storyline just never really sunk its claws into me, and thus I never really got fully into the movie.

There just wasn't much proper contents to the storyline. In fact, the storyline turned out somewhat befuddled and semi-confusing, as if there wasn't a proper red thread throughout the entire movie.

The movie had Bobbie Phillips, Shawnee Smith, Larry Miller and Paul Johansson on the cast list, among others, so there are some familiar faces at least. A shame, however, that the script and storyline didn't really offer the performers all that much material to work with.

I found "Carnival of Souls" to be a mediocre movie, watchable for sure, but it is by no means a movie that I will be returning to watch a second time. And it certainly was not a movie that had anything grand to offer, so I hadn't really been missing out on anything here. Not is "Carnival of Souls" a movie that I would recommend fans of the horror genre to dash out and get their hands on.

My rating of "Carnival of Souls" lands on a three out of ten stars.