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Drag me to Hell
After
sending the better part of a decade building, strengthening, and then
sort of weakening the Spider-man franchise (peter parker dancing with a
KD Lang fringe? No thanks), cult horror auteur Sam Raimi returned to his
roots with Drag Me to Hell. Raimi’s status as a horror master stems from
the critically lauded Evil Dead Trilogy, so many fans held out high
hopes for this movie. Fortunately Drag Me to Hell doesn’t disappoint,
and delivers all the gore, thrills and also plenty of dark humour.
The
plot concerns loan officer Christine Brown (Allison Lohman), who is
gunning for an assistant manager’s position but is thwarted by her
inability to make the tough decisions. In an attempt to impress her
boss, Christine denies a mortgage extension to an elderly gypsy woman.
The gypsy doesn’t take too kindly to this, and amid claims of being
humiliated, swears revenge. A curse is placed on Christine, which
involves three days of torment, before being dragged to hell to suffer
for all eternity.
Drag
Me to Hell has all the necessary ingredients that make a Sam Raimi film,
and all the necessary ingredients that make a good horror film. Special
effects are used sparingly, Raimi instead crafts his suspense with
shadows and silence. When effects are used, they are usually more for
laughs than scares, such as a goat possessed by the demon Lamia, and a
dream sequence which involves eyes popping out of heads in a Looney
Tunes manner. For the easily squeamish, Drag Me to Hell also includes
the requisite amount of bodily fluids found in a Raimi movie. Some are
hilarious, such as when Christine finds herself spraying blood through
the nose on a stunned co worker. Others tend to veer a little more to
the disgusting, such as the excessive vomit scene with the gypsy and
Christine. Despite this, Drag Me to Hell is a success on almost all
levels. The premise is interesting, the acting is solid, there are
plenty of funny moments and perhaps most importantly, the film is
creepy, startling and scary when it needs to be.
Drag
Me to Hell comes as a 2 disc set, the first disc containing the movie
(sadly no commentary), and the second disc containing the special
features. There are a rather large selection of featurettes, which shows
various aspects of the films production. The shorts are hosted by Justin
Long, who moves the viewer from one short to the next with some humorous
asides, especially during his own profile.. The diaries are fairly
amusing and informative, such as the one which demonstrates how they
rigged the blood to spew from Alison Lohman’s nose, or the one which
focuses on the goat.
Call
it a return to form, call it funny, call it scary, call it whatever you
want. Drag Me to Hell is a great horror film, doing something different
to the majority of the genres films today. It doesn’t rely on long,
gruesome depictions of torture and also manages to entertain on a number
of levels. Drag Me to Hell provides laughs and scares, and shows that
after all these years, Raimi still knows how to make a damn entertaining
horror movie. |
