Many directors search for, but few find, that elusive intersection of chills and chuckles where Sam Raimi built his early reputation before being swallowed by the cultural weight of the “Spider-Man” franchise. When he made “The Evil Dead” in 1981, he was just 22, an ebullient boy whose movie thrummed with the excitement of its creator. Back then his stampeding camera, over-the-top imagination and cheeky way with foliage felt new and invigorating, a kick in the pants for jaded horror fans and a wake-up call for genre filmmakers.
At a time when horror is defined by limp Japanese retreads or punishing exercises in pure sadism, “Drag Me to Hell” has a tonic playfulness that’s unabashedly retro, an indulgent return to Mr. Raimi’s goofy, gooey roots. More jolting and juicy than the typical PG-13 offering, the movie has a perfunctory plot that centers on Christine (Alison Lohman), a tenderhearted loan officer at a California bank.
Eager to prove to her boss (David Paymer) that she can toughen up in time for a demanding promotion, Christine denies a mortgage extension to a milky-eyed crone with yellow fingernails and matching sputum (a gleefully disgusting Lorna Raver). Later, in the menacing blankness of an underground parking garage, the old woman expresses her displeasure. Flying dentures are only the warm-up.
This early set piece, a breathtaking blur of energetic body slams and artfully deployed office supplies, is much too cartoonish to be repellent. (Only Mr. Raimi can make granny-bashing hilarious.) Emerging from the melee cursed by her elderly foe, Christine spends the remainder of the movie fending off an evil demon and the concerns of her milquetoast boyfriend (Justin Long), an earnest professor tired of returning home each evening to shattered furniture.
As her character arcs from sweet-submissive to deadly determined (and her wardrobe from business chic to mud-drenched T-shirt), her director rushes through a disastrous dinner party and a demented exorcism with giddy velocity, accomplishing more with curling shadows and billowing drapes than with an army of computer-graphics specialists. And if he seems a little too fixated on orifice abuse — Christine’s mouth and nose are repeatedly invaded by things that spurt and slither and suck — his visuals never feel punitive. Mean-spiritedness is not his way.
Swift and sure, “Drag Me to Hell” unfurls in vertiginous, comic-book frames, like a long-lost issue of “Tales From the Crypt.” Neither small humans nor smaller animals are exempt from the carnage, which is orchestrated (by Mr. Raimi and his screenwriting sibling, Ivan) to recall memorable moments in horror-movie history. The most chilling of these is the sight of the old woman’s car (played by Mr. Raimi’s own 1973 Oldsmobile), idling in the parking garage like the malevolent Plymouth Fury of John Carpenter’s “Christine.”
As for Ms. Lohman, she suffers the indignities of the genre like a champ, morphing from mouse to hellion as her expiration date approaches. And while no one will mistake her journey — whose title sounds like a desperate plea from the director’s fan base — for a masterpiece, the movie has a crackpot vitality that breaches our defenses.
In films like “Darkman” and the thematically similar “Spider-Man 2,” Mr. Raimi revealed a gift for merging the human and the fantastic, sustaining poignant love stories in the midst of horror and revenge. His talent is greater than this, but for now this will do.
“Drag Me to Hell” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). A feast of flies, phlegm, fisticuffs and embalming fluid.
DRAG ME TO HELL
Opens on Friday nationwide.
Directed by Sam Raimi; written by Sam Raimi and Ivan Raimi; director of photography, Peter Deming; edited by Bob Murawski; music by Christopher Young; production designer, Steve Saklad; produced by Rob Tapert and Grant Curtis; released by Universal Pictures. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes.
WITH: Alison Lohman (Christine Brown), Justin Long (Clayton P. Dalton), Lorna Raver (Mrs. Ganush), Dileep Rao (Rham Jas), David Paymer (Mr. Jacks) and Adriana Barraza (Shaun San Dena
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Drag Me to Hell, Sam Raimi's delirious psych-out of a horror film, is a candy-colored ghouls-gone-wild nightmare that treats every shock as a joke — or, at least, as an invitation to crack up at your own gullibility. Raimi, like Roman Polanski in his classic Repulsion (1965), surrounds a comely blond lass (Alison Lohman) with demons that seem to be erupting right out of her head. He gets into our heads, too; he scares the unholy living bejesus out of you. Raimi's operating model is the fun house, with its jack-in-the-box terrors, but he doesn't just toy with the audience. He plays it, like a maestro. He orchestrates a tongue-in-cheek symphony of fear.
Lohman, with her slightly dazed, rabbit-toothed sensuality, plays a bank worker who refuses to renew the mortgage of a one-eyed, rotten-toothed old gypsy woman (Lorna Raver). Lohman then spends the rest of the film fighting off the curse the gypsy has placed on her. She's assaulted by flash-cut visions of baroquely grotesque and evil things, starting with the gypsy herself, a hideous crone who has a way of taking out her false teeth and, well, doing stuff without them. Their first encounter in a parking garage is like a slasher showdown crossed with a wrestling blowout; it unites the audience in a collective moan-laugh-shriek. The bedroom nightmare that follows is so gross it redefines the phrase in your face, and from then on we're clamped into a state of tingly anticipatory anxiety.
Raimi directed all three Spider-Man films, but in the '80s, before he went Hollywood, he made The Evil Dead and its sequel — splendid exercises in slapstick mutilation and whooshing-camera dread. Drag Me to Hell marks a return to their spirit — even if it's only PG-13! — but it's also a deftly unified freak show that keeps intensifying as its wormy-devil images keep spewing. Going back to his roots, Raimi has made the most crazy, fun, and terrifying horror movie in years. A
Posts: 27141 | Location: Phoenix, AZ | Registered: February 02, 2003
The best horror movies, like the best amusement park rides, should elicit equal parts screams and laughter. Drag Me to Hell fits that squirmy bill and then some.
Sam Raimi (the Spider-Man movies) has fashioned a slick, old-school scarefest that combines the best of schlocky fright flicks with classic supernatural thrillers. Raimi returns triumphant to the genre where he cut his teeth, so to speak, with 1981's The Evil Dead. (Speaking of things dental, there are some outrageous moments involving a toothless old lady and her menacing dentures.)
The movie centers on a contest between this geriatric meanie (Lorna Raver) and Christine (Alison Lohman), a damsel in distress who fights back. A bank officer angling for a promotion, Christine rejects an extension on the old lady's defaulted home loan. How timely that the mayhem is kicked off by someone facing foreclosure.
The elderly woman, whose vaguely Slavic accent conjures up images of gypsies, does more than give Christine the evil eye, though eyeballs do figure prominently.
Evoking the black comedy of his early horror films, Raimi has fashioned a cathartic thrill ride that seems almost innocent by current horror standards. He relies on shadows and ominous sounds to make the audience jump and recoil, rather than grisly violence, blood splattering or bone-crunching special effects.
Drag Me to Hell is horror light. Jokey and playful, it's far from the torture porn of such fright flicks as the Saw and Hostel series. Instead of gruesome weaponry or mass slaughter, there are insects and a ghostly séance.
For witty one-liners, there's Justin Long as Clay, Christine's devoted boyfriend. Most of the roles are caricatures, but intentionally so.
Drag Me to Hell is unlike any scary thriller in a while: frightening, frenzied and fun.
Posts: 27141 | Location: Phoenix, AZ | Registered: February 02, 2003
FATE WORSE THAN DEBT BY KYLE SMITH Last updated: 1:00 am May 29, 2009 Posted: 12:26 am May 29, 2009
THERE'S an evil spirit on the loose: It's got hooves and horns and fur and it's really messing up the house. It's . . . Poltergoat!
"Spider-Man" director Sam Raimi's tongue-in-cheek horror flick "Drag Me to Hell" returns him to where he got started, "Evil Dead"-style. Raimi doesn't care whether you're laughing or screaming.
As a young loan officer (the talented Alison Lohman, who gives this material better than it deserves) seeking a promotion at her bank forecloses on a Gypsy crone who curses her to hell, we can't (SCREECH!) go more than a couple of minutes (SQUAWK!) without a skull-jarring (ROOOOAR!) audio effect. The movie is not without some cheap thrills, but it works on the same principle as a fast-food joint or a hair conditioner. It's all about volume.
The story, despite all the poring through ancient texts and attempts to dress it up in fancy myths, could play out in five minutes. The banker, dragging her boyfriend (Justin Long) to visit a fortune-and-exposition teller (Dileep Rao), learns that the Gypsy gained full cursing rights when she ripped a button off the girl and gave it back to her. Give away the button, and you'll pass along the curse to the next victim. (Me, I'd sew the button inside my wallet and ride the subway with the billfold sticking out of my pocket.)
That the film puts off revealing this bit of common sense for no good reason suggests its original title was "Drag Me to the 90-Minute Mark." The banking drama ("I met with their CFO and presented a formula for restructuring some of their long-tem debt") turns out to have nothing to do with anything. Nor does a séance, which despite much crashing scenery leaves the situation at status quo. Nor do secondary characters. Nor does the back story (the loan officer used to be fat and live on a farm, but she doesn't speak goat or anything).
Virtually every scene relies on gross-outs: There's a firehose-strength nose bleed and an arm down someone's throat. The Gypsy witch loses her dentures and slobbers on the heroine's face. Someone vomits a kitten. Someone else gets attacked by an evil handkerchief.
If the Gypsy woman could send a goat-ghost out to ruin people's lives and generally terrify them, why couldn't she have used this little trick to blackmail her way to a fortune, or at least enough cash to make her mortgage payments? If the object of her curse is to accomplish the imperative suggested by the title, why doesn't it do so right away rather than goofing around with harmless scare tactics for an hour?
The irony of Pucifer citing a right-wing film critic from a wingnut newspaper.
I agree with the sentiment Pacinofan once stated (hope I am quoting him correctly) - unless someone is willing to post reviews irrespective of what they say about a film - that is, objectively - he/she should refrain from doing so. It violates the spirit of this thread.
I have no idea if Drag Me to Hell is a good or bad movie. I haven't seen it, thus have no opinion. I do know that Raimi has made several excellent films, both in the horror genre (The Evil Dead) and serious drama (A Simple Plan), as well as a decent Spider-Man series. So at the very least he deserves the benefit of the doubt, not the knee-jerk, non-serious rejection from Pucifer's Politburo.
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'Drag Me to Hell' Alison Lohman stars in Sam Raimi's 'Drag Me to Hell.' A Universal release of a Ghost House Pictures presentation. Produced by Rob Tapert, Grant Curtis. Executive producers, Joe Drake, Nathan Kahane. Co-producers, Cristen Carr Strubbe, Ivan Raimi. Directed by Sam Raimi. Screenplay, Raimi, Ivan Raimi.
Christine Brown - Alison Lohman Clay Dalton - Justin Long Mrs. Ganush - Lorna Raver Rham Jas - Dileep Rao Mr. Jacks - David Paymer Shaun San Dena - Adriana Barraza Leonard Dalton - Chelcie Ross Stu Rubin - Reggie Lee
Sam Raimi returns to his roots in "Drag Me to Hell," a flagrantly schlocky horror yarn that will titillate the teens without alienating the director's far pickier fanboy contingent, who will find the "Evil Dead"-style action they've been clamoring for in a surprisingly potent PG-13 package. When the bank forecloses on an old gypsy's house, it's the unlucky young loan officer who risks having her soul repossessed in this throwback to both Raimi's early work and '50s B-movies. After booking the pic in coveted midnight slots at the SXSW and Cannes fests, Universal should see strong awareness yield heavenly returns.
As its no-nonsense title suggests, "Drag Me to Hell" offers a kicking-and-screaming riff on the classic curse movie -- and if the material scarcely warrants feature length, so be it. Scant of plot and barren of subtext, the pic is single-mindedly devoted to pushing the audience's buttons, and who better than Raimi to do the honors? Long before he went legit with "A Simple Plan," helmer was perfecting inventive shocks on shoestring budgets, and, as if to remind us of that legacy, he opens this modestly budgeted film (by "Spider-Man" standards, at least) with an early-'80s Universal logo.
First scene further cements the tone, as an innocent boy (though not so innocent as to avoid being cursed) attempts to outrun his imminent damnation, only to be thrown from a balcony and swallowed whole by a gaping, fiery chasm in the earth. It's hard to imagine such a fate awaiting Christine (Alison Lohman), a sweet young lady gunning for the assistant manager job at her local bank, until we see the almost comically unkempt old hag who comes begging for an extension on her mortgage.
With one bad eye, gnarled fingernails and inexplicably jagged dentures, Mrs. Ganush (Lorna Raver) is clearly the reason Raimi and his brother Ivan decided to write this in the first place. She's as memorable a villain as Christine is forgettable a heroine, and the fact that Mrs. Ganush means bad business is so evident in her introductory scene that the mere appearance of her car (played by Raimi's own instantly recognizable 1973 Oldsmobile) in the parking garage is enough to make neck hairs stand on end.
On the losing end of a showdown that makes creative use of a stapler and several other everyday office supplies, Mrs. Ganush manages to grab one of Christine's buttons and utter a nasty incantation. "Soon it will be you who comes begging to me," she predicts. But the crusty old crone expires before Christine can ask her to lift the curse, leaving our hell-bent heroine with no one but her skeptical fiance (Justin Long) and an in-over-his-head street-corner psychic (Dileep Rao) to advise her on how to escape her fate.
In the increasingly desperate events that follow, Raimi clearly believes the mouth, not the eyes, are the window to the soul, with one grossout gag after another exploiting auds' fear of foreign substances (from ominous flies to Mrs. Ganush's phlegm) entering the mouth. Such off-putting visuals are considerably more effective than Raimi's next favorite trick, which is to ratchet up the already overloud soundtrack alongside a shock cut.
The scares are all delivered in Raimi's usual tongue-in-cheek style, down to the menacing goat-like "Lamia" (seen only in cartoonish silhouette, its shape is a direct homage to Jacques Tourneur's 1957 "Night of the Demon"). It's odd to find so many laugh-out-loud moments amid such genuine tension, but were it not for Raimi's comic touch, auds would likely be outraged by a good deal of the material -- the fate of Christine's kitten, for instance, or the movie's unapologetically backward characterization of gypsies.
Pic seems to have lucked into what little relevance the mortgage crisis lends its story, otherwise so slight as to seem better suited to an hourlong "Masters of Horror" episode. Still, there's no denying it delivers far more than competing PG-13 thrillers (including several from Raimi's own Ghost House shingle).
CG touches -- including the one that'll have auds cheering into the end credits -- look cheap, but practical effects and makeup are tops.
Posts: 27141 | Location: Phoenix, AZ | Registered: February 02, 2003
Originally posted by seanflynn: The irony of Pucifer citing a right-wing film critic from a wingnut newspaper.
I agree with the sentiment Pacinofan once stated (hope I am quoting him correctly) - unless someone is willing to post reviews irrespective of what they say about a film - that is, objectively - he/she should refrain from doing so. It violates the spirit of this thread.
I have no idea if Drag Me to Hell is a good or bad movie. I haven't seen it, thus have no opinion. I do know that Raimi has made several excellent films, both in the horror genre (The Evil Dead) and serious drama (A Simple Plan), as well as a decent Spider-Man series. So at the very least he deserves the benefit of the doubt, not the knee-jerk, non-serious rejection from Pucifer's Politburo.
The irony of your diatribe is apparently lost on you--and here I thought you were smarter than that!
It is you, not I, who is enforcing the Politburo, darling, by calling for censorship.
Goats? Gypsies? Please. Get back to me when you get serious.
I have made no call for censorship. You are making that up.
I have appealed to you as a matter of decency and honor to go along with the spirit of this thread. It is your choice as to whether you do so.
As far as your new critic of choice, Kyle Smith, I'm looking through his reviews.
Some notes:
He automatically pans films that are sympathetic to liberal/progressive views - Battle of Haditha ("anti-American"), Jimmy Carter - Man of Plains, Che, Sicko
He loved The Dark Knight.
He gave one of the most favorable reviews in Metacritic on Paul Blart, Mall Cop. Also to Valkyrie.
He, like you, has an agenda. The difference is his is more consistent and coherent.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: seanflynn,
Our heroine is asleep at home. A fly buzzes near her, lands on her face, crawls into her right nostril. After a few beats, it emerges from her left nostril and, purposefully, presses itself into her closed mouth. It’ll stay inside for a while, but not forever.
Drag Me to Hell — a great genre title for an O.K. genre movie — is the latest from Sam Raimi, who made zillions with his Spider-Man movies but is revered by horrorphiliacs for another trilogy, his cheapo-creepo Evil Dead movies. Taking a break from A-movie budgets, subjects and actors, Raimi and his brother Ivan concocted a script about the effects of a gypsy curse on a basically nice person who does One Bad Thing. Inspired by the tone of B-movie scare epics of the '50s, they've made a slick, mostly predictable homage-pastiche that itself rates about a B-.
Christine (Matchstick Man's Alison Lohman) is a friendly, efficient, 20-something career gal with a caring, slightly pompous boyfriend (Justin Long, from the Apple commercials), who just got a job as a professor but whose real function in the film is to scoff at the existence of the satanic forces pestering Christine and to be absent or ignorant whenever bad stuff happens. As the loan officer at an L.A. bank, she has to consider a nutsy crone's request for an extension on a home loan. The old lady, a Mrs. Ganush (the aptly named Lorna Raver), doesn't have much collateral: a glass eye, false teeth that keep slipping out and enough phlegm to fill the Rose Bowl. Reluctantly, and to help her secure a promotion, Christine turns down the loan. Apparently, Christine doesn't realize she's in a horror film, where the first law is to avoid ****ing off a crazy lady with a wandering eye.
That evening after work, in a parking garage that of course has not another soul passing through it for minutes on end, our heroine is attacked by the old lady. At the end of the kind of combat scene Mickey Rourke didn't have to endure in The Wrestler, Mrs. G. snatches a button off Christine's coat and hands it back, with the promise that she'll be hearing from the Lamia. A storefront psychic advisor (Dileep Rao) explains that the Lamia is a demon who toys sadistically with his victims for three days, then pretty much drags them down to Hell. Thus is the logic of horror movies.
It's a doctrine that Raimi devoutly observes, he being as old-fashioned a scare maker as the Lady Ganush is an intoner of maledictions. This is the sort of film where the wind portentously rustles leaves only Christine can see moving; where pots and pans rattle on their own; where every door creaks and violins go tremulous in a John Cagean symphony of noises; where nosebleeds reach Niagara volume; where the shadow of a horned, cloven-hoofed creature proceeds up the stairs toward the heroine's bedroom; and where, to get rid of a curse, you must dig up a grave and pin the button on a crazy person who's dead — but not that dead.
After a while, Raimi's attentiveness to genre formula becomes almost reassuring. You know This Awful Thing is next on the agenda. But speaking as a moviegoer and not as a critic, I'm obliged to confess that, when the first image of the demon flashed onscreen, I got a jolt to my nervous system that was more than a seismic shiver — it felt exactly like a deep electric shock. I could almost hear the Raimis murmur, "Another satisfied customer."
It's not even a spoiler alert to pass along this warning to those of you sitting in the theater at the very end: If you suddenly wonder, "Hey, nobody got dragged to hell in this movie," be assured that the Raimis deliver on their title. They guarantee that people will leave the theater knowing who the hero-victim will be in the all-but-inevitable Drag Me to Hell Again Next Summer.
And to all the bank officers with billions in stimulus handouts and the millions of begging customers: Never say no, especially to crazy old ladies. Don't you dare say no.
Posts: 27141 | Location: Phoenix, AZ | Registered: February 02, 2003
By Michael Rechtshaffen, May 20, 2009 11:50 ET "Drag Me to Hell"
Bottom Line: Diabolically entertaining.
Having been preoccupied with a little thing called the "Spider-Man" trilogy, Sam Raimi returns to his "Evil Dead" roots with "Drag Me to Hell," a funhouse ride of a supernatural thriller surrounding a demonic gypsy curse.
He might be armed with a larger budget than what he had to work with back in the pre-Spidey days, but Raimi's still very much up to his old tricks, retaining that deliriously over-the-top brand of Grand Guignol horror that he had abandoned by the mid-'90s in pursuit of other genres.
Raimi's legions of early fans, who'll likely be tickled by the title alone, are certain to eat this stuff up, especially given the buzz that's been building since a sneak preview of an unfinished version at the South by Southwest Festival in March.
The completed version, meanwhile, will have a Wednesday midnight screening at Cannes ahead of its May 29 opening.
Life for Christine (Alison Lohman) would seem reasonably far from hell given her position as a Los Angeles bank loan officer and her nurturing relationship with her college professor boyfriend (Justin Long).
But all that changes when, forced to choose between granting yet another home loan extension to weird old Mrs. Ganush (fearless stage actress Lorna Raver) or impressing her boss (David Paymer), she opts for career maintenance.
Facing eviction, the elderly Hungarian woman damns Christine's soul with the curse of the Lamia, a mythical beast who'll pay a visit to haul her off to you-know-where.
Hatched by Raimi and his brother Ivan, the scripting is not without some clunky plot mechanics, but it's hard to notice given all that visceral visual goop heaved onto the screen with gleeful abandon.
Incorporating old-school puppetry and prosthetic makeup combined with some judiciously used CGI, along with a colorful cast and composer Christopher Young's unnerving symphonic blasts, Raimi's raucous trip to hell proves to be anything but a drag.
Posts: 27141 | Location: Phoenix, AZ | Registered: February 02, 2003
A ***1/2 out of **** review from Michael Phillips in THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE...
Director Sam Raimi gets back to his disreputable roots with “Drag Me to Hell,” a title never to be confused with “Spider-Man 4” (which Raimi is preparing; let’s hope it’s closer in quality to “Spider-Man 2” than “Spider-Man 3”). This hellaciously effective B-movie comes with a handy moral tucked inside its scares, laughs and Raimi’s specialty, the scare/laugh hybrid. Moral: Be nice to people. More specifically: Do not foreclose on the old Gypsy woman, or it’ll be draggin’ time.
Raimi’s résumé is more interesting than people tend to remember. Have you seen, for example, “Evil Dead 2” or its follow-up, “Army of Darkness”? If you haven’t, you should; they’re quite mad, and quite fantastic. Raimi knows how to modulate his technique, as with the coolly controlled morality tale “A Simple Plan,” but he’s a firm believer in the power of an active, expressive camera, as well as the value of insinuation. In “Drag Me to Hell,” a lace hankie, of all things, turns into a wraithlike portent of doom.
Horror fans shouldn’t worry about an excess of subtlety; the ook flows freely here, and there’s a knock-down, drag-out melee in a parking garage that’ll be hard to top at the movies this year, certainly as far as knock-down, drag-out parking garage melees go. Alison Lohman plays Christine, an L.A. loan officer who makes a bad judgment call at the bank one day in an attempt to curry favor with her boss (David Paymer). For not granting an extension on the home-loan payments owed by Mrs. Ganush (Lorna Raver, who really is a raver), Christine becomes the target of a serious, serious Hungarian cuss-out (“You shame me!”). Before long, the demons of Hades are manifesting themselves and making Christine’s life difficult.
Maggots, old-Gypsy-lady drool, embalming fluid gushing out of a corpse’s mouth—Christine’s always getting hit with something in this picture. Lohman can be good, and she can be bad (terrible, in fact, in “Where the Truth Lies”), but in “Drag Me to Hell” she’s just right. The actress has a winning way of slightly under-responding to each new manifestation that jumps up out of nowhere. (We get a few too many of these bits; even the Jumping Out of Nowhere League may be growing weary of this gimmick by now.)
Justin Long plays Christine’s skeptical but supportive boyfriend. The plot explicators—a psychic and a medium played by Dileep Rao and Adriana Barraza, respectively—do their thing with honest conviction, while Raimi’s special-effects folks do theirs.
“Drag Me to Hell” throws a lot at the screen, sticky or not. But unlike so much at the multiplex these days (“Wolverine,” for example), this low-down number doesn’t give you a computer-generated-imagery headache. Richly scored by composer Christopher Young, who comes up with some ripping solo Gypsy-violin lines, Raimi’s film favors simple pleasures: a silhouette of a demon sliding under a door or across a wall, or an ill wind that almost (but doesn’t quite) take the shape of something concretely terrifying.
Will the target audience go for it? I hope so. I hope the nation’s 17-year-olds aren’t so benumbed by “Saw,” “Hostel” and humorless remakes of humorless, better-made Japanese horror films that they’ve become indifferent to exuberant, well-paced trash. A little wit to go with the dread goes a long way with me. Hope I’m not alone.
mjphillips@tribune.com
Posts: 27141 | Location: Phoenix, AZ | Registered: February 02, 2003
A *** out of **** review from Peter Travers in ROLLING STONE...
There's no truth in the title. Drag Me to Hell is horror-movie heaven. Director Sam Raimi, breaking the shackles of mainstream success with his Spider-Man trilogy, returns to the down-and-dirty cheapies that spawned him with The Evil Dead in 1983. The result, again co-written with his brother Ivan Raimi, plays like a gross-out competition put on by very talented frat boys. I couldn't be happier. The laughs are as explosive as the screams. The loudest shriek comes from the PG-13 rating being squeezed of its last link to good taste. There's less blood and fewer f-bombs, but the movie never stops spewing scares at you.
Alison Lohman was an 11th-hour replacement for Juno's Ellen Page as Christine, a bank officer who denies a mortgage to Mrs. Ganush (Lorna Raver), an old hag with yellow, rotting teeth. Wrong move. When Mrs. G. dies, the curse of the Lamia (great name) kicks in. Lohman is the ultimate good sport. Poor Christine is slimed and penetrated in every orifice. Even her sweet fiancé (nice work from Justin Long) can't help. No tattling, or the Lamia will get me. But watch for the "here, kitty kitty" moment. Only those expecting elegant storytelling will be disappointed. Raimi's job is to keep us revolted and riveted. Consider the job done.
Posts: 27141 | Location: Phoenix, AZ | Registered: February 02, 2003
By Nick Pinkerton Tuesday, May 26th 2009 at 3:26pm
Sam Raimi wants to go home again. Often a drifting virtuoso in the years before finding his Spider-Man gig, with Drag Me to Hell Raimi defaults to the horror romps that made his name (specifically, the Evil Dead trilogy), bringing the old barreling camera and viscous ickiness back and serving a concept lowbrow enough to discourage A-listers.
Made early last year from a long-shelved script by Raimi and brother Ivan, Drag Me has a serendipitously timely victim. Playing a bank loan officer, petite, marshmallow-cheeked Alison Lohman bears the brunt of the film's supernatural humiliations. Lohman's Christine Brown is putting the finishing touches on her self-reinvention as a young professional: eye on a promotion, renting L.A. hillside real estate, and heading toward marriage with an upmarket boyfriend, Clay (that he's played by that icon of yuppie brand identity, smug MacBook shill Justin Long, is perfect). Only leftover photographs and snide comments from Clay's WASP parents give unwelcome reminders of the tubby farm girl she used to be.
One day, smothering her conscience to impress her boss, Christine refuses to take pity on an ancient gypsy woman about to lose her home (Lorna Raver, with a malevolent dead eye, horking up neon phlegm). The Louvin Brothers were right: Satan is Real. The hag hisses a hex, and Christine's life plan is derailed by a chain of diabolical interventions that play like Seventeen magazine's "Embarrassing Moments," as written by Antonin Artaud. Christine spouts a geyser nosebleed at work, is ambushed by hallucinations while meeting her potential in-laws, and starts studying animal sacrifice. A visit to a psychic confirms she's had a demon sicced on her and, if it isn't appeased in time, she'll get the title treatment.
With a PG-13 rating, the movie still smuggles a good amount of awfulness into adolescent minds. The running joke involves getting Christine into situations where her mouth—usually wide open, screaming—is invaded by incredibly vile things: a spelunking fly, a gush of grubs, embalming fluid. Otherwise, the harassing spirit comes on Moe Howard–style—one-two snapping her head back and forth, or unloading a full-body across-the-room heave. If the booga-booga shocks are sometimes repetitive, Drag Me does its audience right in its last-act burst of giddy momentum, sustained by crack editor Bob Murawski through a burlesque exorcism, Christine's dash to find a substitute for her place in Hell, and the final slamming door of the title card.
The combination of Lovecraftian ichor and Hal Roach slapstick made Michigan State dropout Raimi a Fangoria star with 1981's resourceful Evil Dead, on the vanguard of an international groundswell of indie horrors. Kiwi-era Peter Jackson, Return of the Living Dead, Re-Animator, Frank Henenlotter, Nekromantik—these grassroots sickies, marked by tumor-black humor and try-anything camerawork, were an inventive, sanguinary alternative to the flat-out-awful middle range of '80s movies (and, in some cases, résumés for a next generation of blockbuster technicians).
Was this throwback Raimi's way of collecting himself after disappearing into Spider-Man 3's narrative overgrowth? The sense of control is palpable; Raimi, ever the engineer, takes pleasure in screwing with audience identification, shifting between collaboration and contempt for our heroine. We take Christine's side against a brown-nose co-worker (Reggie Lee, very good), Clay's pinky-in-air parents, and that gypsy witch-bitch, whose lingered-on grotesqueness forestalls sympathy—but it's squeaky-cute Christine who is all along the secret villain.
On the surface an Evil Dead successor, Drag Me, an allegory with karmic logic from E.C. Comics and Jack Chick, replays as farce Raimi's A Simple Plan, also based on the boomerang return of transgression. Christine getting bonged on the head with a cross for forgetting the Golden Rule doesn't indicate a particularly nuanced moral vision. Does Raimi—who began his career on a shoestring in the Tennessee woods and now commands $300 million bonanzas—actually believe professional ambition should be punished with eternal damnation?
Posts: 27141 | Location: Phoenix, AZ | Registered: February 02, 2003
This is the first time in a while two movies come out in one weekend that I'd like to see ("Up" being the other one).
"Evil Dead", and the first two "Spiderman" movies are so good, I have a good feeling "Drag Me To Hell" will deliver. (I like to pretend "Spiderman 3" never happened).
This movie was AMAZING!!! It's so frick'n hilarious at parts, while scary (for all the wrong reasons) in others. This is definitely the most fun I've had at the movies in a long time!
For Your Grammy Consideration: Kanye West for "Heartless" and 808's & Heartbreak Adele for "Hometown Glory" Taylor Swift for "You Belong With Me" & Fearless Maxwell for "Pretty Wings" & BLACKsummer'snight Kings of Leon for "Use Somebody" The Cast of GLEE for "Don't Stop Believin' " Mariah Carey for "Obsessed"
Drag Me to Hell: What a drag Director Sam Raimi makes a long-awaited return to his horror roots – too bad Drag Me to Hell is so unoriginal
PETER HOWELL MOVIE CRITIC Drag Me to Hell 2 stars (out of 4)
Starring Alison Lohman, Justin Long, Lorna Raver, Dileep Rao and David Paymer. Directed by Sam Raimi.
98 minutes. At major theatres. 14A
Applauding Sam Raimi for returning to his schlock horror roots is to me like cheering a Big Mac for tasting the same as it always does.
Sure, it's fun that Raimi took a break from counting his Spider-Man loot to bang out a quickie slasher strongly reminiscent of his Evil Dead beginnings.
But couldn't Drag Me to Hell, which Raimi co-wrote with his bro Ivan, have been just a little bit more imaginative? Apart from the evocative title, which is a great nod to '50s drive-in fare, the film is as predictable as a meal beneath the golden arches.
Demonic possession unleashed by strange incantation? Check.
Buckets of gore and various flavours of vomit? Check.
1973 Oldsmobile Delta 88 gratuitously used as prop? Check.
Plot written on back of postcard? Check and double check.
In many ways it's Evil Dead 4, which may explain the critical huzzahs from Cannes to California, with a gender flip for minor variety. This time, the dead-dodging protagonist is a woman, rather than the hapless hero played so memorably and hilariously by Raimi regular Bruce Campbell.
Pity that the woman is Alison Lohman, a woeful actress who seems to have been chosen solely for her resemblance to Spider-Man's Kirsten Dunst (Raimi is one freaky cat).
As much as I enjoy the thought of Lohman being dragged to hell – I hold her responsible for the failure of Atom Egoyan's Where the Truth Lies – she's as exciting to watch as a sack of hammers.
Her character Christine is just too dumb and innocent to warrant the supernatural abuse dealt out to her after she unwittingly runs afoul of a vengeful gypsy crone named Mrs. Ganush (Lorna Raver).
Eager to prove to her grasping bank boss (David Paymer) that she has the cojones to dodge bad loans, Christine's bad timing has her turning down a mortgage extension for Mrs. Ganush when the old hag comes begging.
For acting like a bureaucrat rather than a saint, Christine's punishment is to spend the next 90 minutes attempting to dodge the curse of the Lamia, a body-snatching entity from hell that holds big-time grudges and won't take "no" for an answer. Not even the blood sacrifice suggested by a street-corner swami (Dileep Rao) appeases the grabby ghouls. (Note to cat lovers: be ready to gaze downward into popcorn bag.)
One might argue Christine is already facing perpetual damnation by agreeing to marry her drippy boyfriend Clay (Justin Long), who takes forever to figure things out. Having Lohman and Long co-starring in the same movie is like being banished to the cinema circle of Dante's Inferno.
Part of the problem with Drag Me to Hell is that it's not 1981 anymore, the year The Evil Dead rebooted the horror genre. Special effects have gotten a whole lot less special in the intervening decades. Raimi used to have to use ingenuity to get his lo-fi shocks; now he just has to flip a computer switch.
But my biggest beef with Drag Me to Hell is that it's just not very funny. With the exception of Raimi's depiction of the Lamia as a talking goat, the laughs just don't come as freely as they used to.
Too bad he couldn't have paired the goat with Lars von Trier's talking fox from Antichrist, so that – and I quote the fox – "chaos reigns." But I guess he has to leave something for the inevitable sequel.
Originally posted by seanflynn: The Toronto Star for the record is their equivalent to the NY Post - a right-wing paper known for its animus for anything progressive or liberal.
Perhaps you can also explain why supposed right-wing newspapers would pan a film by a right-wing filmmaker?
And while you're at it, you can enlighten us on how a film about a gypsy curse, cat-killing, and a devil-goat is "liberal"?
