Drag Me to Hell

Christine Brown is looking to land a promotion at the bank she works at but the competition is close. She needs to learn to make the tough decisions when it comes to the job and the opportunity lands right in her lap in the form of Mrs. Ganush (wickedly played by Lorna Raver), an elderly woman who begs for an extension on her mortgage payments but is ultimately denied. A curse is bestowed upon Brown and the fun begins.

Fans have been hanging onto the hopes that eventually they will get a long ago promised Evil Dead sequel and for the most part ramblings about it have only been surfacing with real promise since the end of 08’. So what’s a fan to do? My advice is to check out Drag Me To Hell. While it doesn’t offer up the zaniness that can only be delivered by Raimi and Campbell it does give you a nostalgic look back as well as a promising look forward at what the Raimi brothers have evolved into.

The film is loud and incorporates the age old scare tactics of horror; quiet to loud moments, the gross out factor, but the film still hangs onto that sick humor that has made Raimi a pretty iconic horror director, even after 22 years away from the genre. One of my worries was that the casting was going to leave much to be desired but the film really only relies on the disturbances between Lohman and Raver and the story pretty much handles itself. It’s a break from the many remakes of Asian horror films or American slasher remakes. This is a brand new concept horror film that allows you a bit of escapism by offering up a story you haven’t heard before in a way that is familiar yet shocking. Its exactly the kind of horror films that I used to love growing up; The Evil Dead franchise, House, An American Werewolf in London, etc.

I absolutely loved Drag Me To Hell but that doesn’t mean I can allow the film to get away with some of the lame stuff it has to offer. I know that Raimi has a love for Loony Toons and The Three Stooges and he has a penchant for adding it into his films but one scene which involves an anvil was just to much and the effects did seem to look as if they were still in production which was odd. Other moments in the film that I didn’t like were mostly CGI based. The acting was superb, the story great, but as usual CGI comes in and screws up another seemingly perfect film. Still, well worth it if horror comedy is your bag. Enjoy.