The one bit of SOUL SEARCHER trivia that no viewer can avoid is that it was produced for 28,000 pounds – the modern-day equivalent of about $53,000. While this shows that first-time director Neil Oseman is an extremely frugal filmmaker who can pull off a fully-fledged action-fantasy with the minimum of resources, I am sorry to say that it does not make for a very good movie. To me, SOUL SEARCHER is among the worst kinds of films – a chore to watch. There are some good things to it, but overall, this just isn't very fun.
The story: An unsuspecting young man (Ray Bullock, Jr.) is recruited by the Grim Reaper (Jonny Lewis) to take over his position and stop the plan of a supernatural entity (Aj Nicole) to merge earth and hell.
The primary occupation of director Oseman is cinematography, and as a result, the movie looks good at a glance – not at all like the jerky indie crud you usually associate with this kind of budget, despite the amplitude of hand-held camera-work. There are also some traditional effects used to create various supernatural imagery, and I appreciate the 80s throwback. However, beyond this, the movie is in bad shape. The editing could be a lot better and a lot of the computer-generated effects are not integrated particularly well. The relentless nighttime setting is depressing. Worst of all is the lack of interesting characters. Absolutely none of the people inhabiting this picture are either likable or intriguing enough to merit investment in the storyline, and as a result, a handful of cool plot devices (e.g. the umbilical cord concept of ghosts) are wasted.
Inexplicably, this is also a martial arts movie. The making-of feature goes on about how the filmmakers strived to add a Hong Kong flavor to the fights and how the Hong Kong style is superior to the western style, but these notions are meaningless because, for the most part, these fights suck. The eastern influence is indeed there in the kung fu choreography and the marginally longer shots, but the combatants are almost universally slow and often look very uncomfortable swinging swords and scythes at each other. Their poor pacing and the lack of sound effects do not help, to the point that I only give one of the seven brawls (the final showdown) a passing grade.
I really wanted to like this movie, but too many cinematic shortcomings converged to make this anything more than an exercise in viewer patience. The 98-minute runtime absolutely dragged, and the best part of this experience has been writing this review. Nick Oseman demonstrated that a lot can be done with relatively little money and a lot of determination, and I would be happy to see him helm a bigger-budgeted feature, but this passion project of his is not nearly as good as I had hoped it would be.