Drag Me to Hell

Sam Raimi hasn't made a bad movie yet, and while Drag Me To Hell has emerged as a case of you hate it or you love it (like Apocalypse Now, Forrest Gump, and Avatar). It turns out to be a fun ride.

Christine Brown is a loan officer in L.A. and is trying to get the position of assistant manager. She decides that in order to impress her boss, she has to be tougher. So when an old gypsy woman comes and asks her for a third extension on mortgage payment, Christine denies her that. Feeling shamed, the old woman puts a curse on Christine, and sends a demon after her. Her life is suddenly in ruins, but with the help of a fortune teller, and his Latin American friends, Christine attempts to rid herself of the demon, before it takes her down to hell.

the ending of the film is more than somewhat controversial, and in fact you could even spend the rest of the day going over it in your mind, trying to figure out what the Raimi bros were thinking. In fact considering what they choose, the entire story is kind of pointlessly staged, but at least it is fun. Raimi takes us on a crazy ride, we the viewers are treated to a handful of shocking and humorous moments, many of which directly resemble, the Evil Dead flicks. You can tell from this that after fifteen years, Raimi is still a master at horror. He has tackled every genre but it is clear now that he is most at home with this genre. I would not say it's lovable, but it doesn't disappoint either.

"Drag Me To Hell" transports to you to the era of 1980's where blood, gore, chills and likes of "Nightmare on Elm Street" / "Evil Dead" spawned in plenty. And yes, for a welcome change "Drag Me To Hell" steers clear from the Japanese horror genre and pans out to be a very much American product.

† Alison Lohman "i can shriek" delivers the right expressions warranted for a horror movie. Anything more would have been potential overdose.

† Justin Long "Keanu Reeves impersonator" is plastic expressions all the way.

† Reggie Lee "corporate pacman" does a good job of munching up everything that comes between him and the success ladder.

† David Paymer "carrot dangler" knows how to make the rabbits dance to his tunes.

† Lorna Raver "the trigger of Lamia curse" ensures to get etched in the memory and haunt you for a very long time.

† Dileep Rao "amateur spiritualist" was okay'ish. It appears his part got hijacked by his Guru.

† Flor de Maria Chahua "avenger in waiting" has a brief but effective role. And so was her assistant.

All in all "Drag Me To Hell" is both tacky and cheesy, but that doesn't stop it from sending shivers down the spine. The screenplay is void of drag moments ensuring the audience get fright doses at regular intervals. Good utilisation of visual effects and the background score alleviate the visual experience. The potholes in writing could have been easily creased out. Not exactly horror-comedy like "Shawn Of The Dead" but it does have well-interlaced comical moments between the chills.

Watchable fare... and yes a few days you potentially might abstain from using the staplers.

Drag me to Hell is, really, a throwback in so many ways to the fun of The Evil Dead 2. The camera angles, the excellent score - it all recalls how Raimi played with us in his earlier trilogy. What has changed however, is the sense of pace. We know its coming and Raimi employs all his skills to draw out the tension. The thrills are all there in place, I jumped like there was an electric buzzer under my seat. Perhaps a little too much CGI is indulged in but its easy to forgive in a film as wicked and blackly comic as this. I genuinely found the film disturbing for a 15 as well, again I think this is a mark of tension that Raimi creates with the score and camera work throughout the film. So incredibly refreshing to see a horror film with out the hallmarks of the recent saw franchise. Special mention for the ending, which has conviction and guts and was the proverbial cherry on top of the cake. throughly entertaining.

Waiting for another Sam Raimi horror film has been like hoping your numbers come up on the national lottery, long, arduous and ultimately unfruitful. So it be that when one finally comes around, there is a tendency to over praise, over hype, and even be blind to actually how worthy Drag Me To Hell is. Not only in the pantheon of the horror genre, but in the cannon of its supremely talented director.

So it comes to pass that myself, a Raimi fan for sure, decided to let the hoo-hah die down before venturing in to Hell with Alison Lohman and her devilish nemesis. I note now at the current time of writing that the film is rated just over 7.5/10, that's just about right where it deserves to be. It's not new or remotely ingenious, and for sure it's actually finding Raimi on auto-pilot for himself and his fans. But hey! It's still far better than the ream of remakes and blood for bloods sake cash cows that insult the genre faithful on a monthly basis.

Drag Me To Hell is a comedy horror, there's nothing really scary here, it's gross at times, almost disgustingly {delightfully} so, but Raimi is reliant on fun to go hand in hand with a creeper of a story instead of a conventional boo jump bonanza. And it works just fine. The story sees Alison Lohman's Christine Brown upset an old gypsy woman and gets a curse of demonic proportions laid onto her. This set up then lets Raimi pummel Lohman with a number of excellently scripted set pieces, whilst managing to keep a mystery element ticking throughout the story. Some problems do exist, tho, certainly enough to ensure this isn't the masterpiece the desperate for a Raimi horror hoards have labelled it.

Lohman does real well in relation to duality of character, but both she and her on screen beau, Justin Long, just look too young for the roles they are playing, and yes, it's pretty distracting and an itch you can't scratch. The CGI is also duff and affecting the story, particularly during what should have been a ripper of an ending. And crucially there is a familiarity about the whole thing, a feeling that Raimi and his brother Ivan have just made a collage of genre staples.

Still, Drag Me To Hell makes for a real entertaining night in by the fire. Enjoy a director making a film for himself as much as his fans, a sort of roots revisit if you like. But don't expect a genre defining, or genre boosting, picture, because you may be a tad disappointed with the return. 7/10

DRAG ME TO HELL sees Sam Raimi attempting to update his EVIL DEAD formula to the modern era, reinventing it as a teen-friendly comic horror about an unsuspecting bank worker who becomes a victim of a witch's curse. It sounds entertaining, and you'd think it would be easy for a man who once made it his job to bring fresh, energetic horror to our cinema screens.

Sadly, time has passed, and nowadays the formula seems a little stale. Raimi relies far too much on CGI in this movie, so that most of the (frequent) scare scenes are fake-looking and cartoonish; sometimes making this look like a Looney Tunes cartoon done via live action. I'd much have preferred practical effects, because then the film wouldn't have been so cheesy and laughable.

The mood is all over the place, too. The witch's curse storyline has real potential to be interesting, but none of the scare scenes work, mainly because Raimi goes for the gross-out over the genuinely spooky. There's a kind of infantile relish in watching a toothless old crone slobbering over her victim that makes me wonder what exactly he was thinking of. Playing it straight would have worked far better, I think.

The cast is nothing to write home about, with performances ranging from the pantomime (Dileep Rao) to the decent (David Paymer). As the heroine, Alison Lohman tries very hard to convince, although she does fail to elicit much sympathy. The pacing's good, though, and there are plenty of set-pieces and jump-in-your-seat moments, so undemanding horror fans might find themselves entertained regardless. Sometimes, though, Raimi goes too far; take the goat scene: just what on earth was he thinking?