From an interview with Brooke Shields in the LA Times:
"It's hard to find your own sound, not being a recording artist," she went on. "For example, Raul has a very specific, amazing sound and range and style. He'll say, 'Today I'm just going to "mark it" [musical theater slang for 'just go through the motions'] and I'm, like, 'Your "marking it" is the rest of the world's top-notch performance.'
Um, they do. I don't know why the mic is so visible in that one shot. Maybe the light caught it the wrong way or something. Although I think what maybe happened is the mic slipped or got loose, because my memory of it is right up at her hairline in the center, not down and off to one side like that.
lol, then you'd think they could have re-taken the photo... or used a different one. Oh well. I think Brooke looks prettier in the commercial with her hair up than with it just kind of flopping all over the place.
I don't care, in general. It just doesn't. fit. the character. But obviously somebody thinks it does. He's a crook, but he has to at least SEEM like this nice, trustworthy guy that the townspeople are going to put their faith in. This hard-edged Che Guevara look doesn't say that, to me. There's this weird sinister unapproachability that comes off in some of the photos of Jonas, and I know that's just in a still image, but with a character who's living double, so to speak, that kind of stuff is hugely important.
I think it just kind of takes away the sweetness in his face when it's like that. (Not that it'd fit Jonas, either, but if he had gone all Normal Heart-era that's enough the other way that he still gets that quality). If this is someone who these people are going to really blindly trust, he has to have a gentleness to him. And yes, that comes off in presence and whatever, but the look has got to match the persona. For example -- could you have imagined Bobby with that kind of facial hair? Not that Jonas has the... innocence of Bobby, and not that Jonas is innocent OR sweet in the beginning, but I still think you have to be able to buy him as somebody who's not a sleazy swindler. The whole "I'm shaggy and I don't really shower" thing doesn't work.
My friend (who is a film and TV critic, with a particular love for the horror genre) saw My Soul To Take, offered this capsule review focusing on Raul's role, and with helpful information for the chicken-hearted among us.
Mr. Esparza is in perhaps the first 10-15 minutes of the movie. He has a bit of a one-man show as his various personalities come out and talk with each other. Now, there are only two or three bits *I* would consider jump scares -- when he's down on the floor, apparently dead, and the policeman leans over him, and again in the ambulance. However, be aware that once he gets off the phone with his psychiatrist, it *immediately* gets bloody (his "sleeping" wife is already dead). He appears briefly in a few flashbacks later in the film.
There is so much emphasis - well-done, for the most part - on the travails of high school life that much of the film plays more like high school dramedy than like horror. There's a wonderful scene in a science class that has no horror in it (although the symbolism returns later) where two of the main characters have constructed a giant condor costume for their class presentation that is surprising and hilarious. There is also a surprisingly sympathetic (without actually endorsing the concept) portrait of a teenaged fundamentalist Christian.
Again, though, there is a *lot* of blood and once things get going, there are a fair amount of "jump" scares (literally, where something on screen scares you with sudden movement). So if you (or anybody you speak with) plans on staying for the whole film, be aware of this.
The ambulance scene is online. It's not really scary, it's just jump-inducing, but it's all a trick of the camera angles. Raul ROARING at some kid is less-than terrifying.
Personally, I would never pay current urban movie theater prices to stay for 15 minutes of a movie. I rarely pay them for movies I WANT to see. And on top of not really feeling the urge to be a completist, the reviews I've seen are terrible.
I was highly amused to see that the NYT review, which is a relatively brief 5 paragraphs long, spent the entire last paragraph on Raul and his Broadway career. Reviewer Mike Hale clearly did his homework!