Horror Movies : Drag Me to Hell Sam Raimi mud-bodily-fluid,-gross-out, old school style
Written: Oct 30 '09 (Updated Nov 17 '09)
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Product Rating:
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| Bang For The Buck |
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Pros: If you liked Raimi's Evil Dead movies you'll probably like this
Cons: two dimensional characters, so-so script. Not scary.
The Bottom Line: Return to Evil Dead days for Raimi. Not Scary but a fun campy ride.
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| ChrisJarmick's Full Review: Drag Me to Hell |
Reasons to see Drag Me To Hell
1. Sam Raimi directed. He hasn’t directed a horror movie in many years and that’s good news for his fans.
2. It’s not a slasher or torture porn kind of horror movie
3. It’s pretty good
4. It’s starts well and had a good ending.
Reasons Not to See Drag Me To Hell
1. Sam Raimi directed and you don’t like his movies
2. It’s a campy, cartoonish type of horror film
3. Mediocre script, several characters are two dimensional
4. A few jumps and gross out but no really ‘earned’ scares.
PLOT
After a very brief pro-logue in which a young child is taken by a demon spirit in a very large mansion (and killed; dragged to hell), while a young Mexican woman screams out in horror … the movie begins in present day.
Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) is a loan officer at Union Bank who is up for a promotion but her rival is a back-stabbing, jerk who’s willing to cheat and lie himself into the promotion if he needs to (he’s played by Reggie Lee last seen in Tropic Thunder). Her boss is played by David Paymer (who’s always fun to watch). Her boyfriend, college professor Clay (played by Justin Long) is about to ask her to marry him, but first they have to meet his parents and his very picky domineering Mom.
Christine is anxious to prove she is the right person for the promotion, so she refuses to extend a home loan for a very old gypsy lady Mrs. Ganush (Lorna Raver). She’s quite upset and warns Christine she will be very very sorry for being so cruel to her. And indeed she is. Very quickly, Mrs. Ganush puts a really nasty curse on Christine and she begins seeing terrible things. Most of what she sees isn’t actually there, but we see the hallucinations too and they are pretty wild. Christine starts acting very strangely in front of her co-worker, her boss and her boyfriend. At one point she has a geyser of a nose bleed for real and sprays her boss with blood who gives her the day off.
Next, Christine decides to seek the help of a psychic and spritualist, Rham Jas (Dileep Rao) much to boyfriend Clay’s dismay. Rham does ‘feel’ something and eventually a cleansing ceremony takes place which involves the now grown up Mexican woman we saw in the pre-credit sequence, Rham, Christine, a goat and another young man. The cleansing doesn’t work quite as planned and…..
Enjoy the movie if you want to know more. The movie was made with a combination of mechanical and CGI effects. The effects are theatrical, not completely believable, yet very well done. There are some excellent gross-out type effects which are meant to make you say… YECH…and you probably will. There aren’t really any scary moments and most of the movie is very predictable—but not completely—which winds up being it’s most redeeming value.
The characters are a little too naïve and their motivations and behaviors are quite unbelievable in a happens only in a movie sort of way—but you expect this sort of thing in a horror movie usually don’t you? There’s enough cleverness with the special effects and the updating of the gypsy curse storyline, that you won’t be bored. Raimi keeps things happening on a regular basis and just when the movie starts to drag… BOOM things start to really happen.
Justin Long is used as a supporting character. He plays the concerned boy-friend in much the same way we’ve seen women in these movies play the concerned girlfriend or wife. Interesting idea to have this gender switch, but it’s a dated conceit. Watch for the clever ending…. I wish I could tell you there was something particularly innovative or unique about the movie; I can not.
If you like fast-paced comedy horror movies and/or Raimi’s Evil Dead series, this one is right up your alley. The Unrated DVD had a few minutes of additional footage.
There is also a multi chapter Video Diary going over several aspects of the movie and showing how many of the special effects were done.
3 and a half stars.. bumped to 4.
Good Halloween movie.
Recommended:
Yes
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ChrisJarmick
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Member: Chris Jarmick
Location: Seattle
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With or-w/o hat,writing quality reviews,encouraging-others-to-do likewise-since-the-'50's.
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