Review: SOUL HUNTERS (2019)

I’ll give Soul Hunters credit for pulling a genre switch I can’t remember having seen before. Instead of the now-disgraced hero becoming mob muscle, it has its former special forces operative working for the Legions of Hell. Instead of collecting cash, he collects the souls of those whose deals with the Devil have come due.

Marcus (Zach Scheerer) was a special forces operative until he guessed wrong on which target to go after. The resulting bomb blast led to the death of hundreds, including the family of his partner Eli (David Josh Lawrence). Unsurprisingly Eli still holds a grudge over this.

These days Marcus collects souls for the literal underworld, retrieving them and turning them over to his handler Raquel (Kelsey Johnson). But when his past comes back to haunt him just as the beautiful Kristen (Franziska Schissler The Dawnseeker, Clyde Cooper) walks into his life finds himself caught in a battle between Heaven and Hell. Can he save mankind, and possibly even redeem his own soul?

The first feature from brothers Adrian and Arturo Acevedo-Smith, Soul Hunters certainly has its moments and some nice ideas. However, it’s badly hampered by flat acting and awful dialogue. If you’re going to create your own version of the Bible’s war between God and Satan you need to sell it. And the script and cast here aren’t up to it, which is a shame because I like the way they re-frame it along the lines of a mob turf war with agents, handlers and souls as currency.

There are some other nice touches like the little canister things they use to hold souls are nice looking as are the effects of the soul taking itself. For what looks to be a very low budget film it has better than expected CGI.

On the other hand, the fight scenes are a very mixed bag. There are a couple that are good but a lot of the action scenes aren’t that well choreographed. Also, there’s more than one scene where Marcus does a little extra move before launching a kick, leaving himself open in a way a good opponent would use to knock him on his ass.

Soul Hunters could have been a fun supernatural action film. But its writer/directors have attempted to bite off a bit too much with their limited budget and experience and it shows. They do show creativity and ambition, so I’m hoping they get a chance to try again.

Soul Hunters is available on Amazon

Where to watch Soul Hunters