Note: Yeah, I can't believe it took me this long to see it either...
PG-13 horror movies are often written off as shallow attempts by studios to increase profit at the cost of cutting away a film?s mature scenes. This basically means that what was once a topless gruesome F-bomb-a-thon becomes a watered down affair where the language and gore are toned down substantially, and the female characters are forced to wear tight scraps of clothing as opposed to nothing at all. While I?ll confess that I personally believe a sexless sex comedy to be a blatant oxymoron, exactly who?s to say that you can?t have a horror movie without gore? Effective horror has always been characterized by what is implied and not what is explicit, something that most horror filmmakers steadfastly refuse to understand.
Now we have Sam Raimi, once hyperbolic gore virtuosos extraordinaire, returning to his Evil Dead years in the 80s after taking some time off to make Columbia Pictures a few billion dollars with his rendition of Spider-Man. Drag Me To Hell is his latest film, which can be seen both as an Evil Dead spin-off and a revisitation of the genre he revolutionized. Though no matter which way you approach it, I can only think of one word to sum up this movie: Fun.
Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) is a loan officer who, eager for a promotion, denies an elderly woman an extension on her mortgage in an effort to prove to her boss that she has the ability to make tough decisions. Because antagonizing the disgusting wretch with a wandering glass eye is a sure fire way to make it to the end credits of a horror movie, Christine is assaulted and cursed in the parking garage by the vile woman shortly thereafter. Bizarre occurrences involving sentient winds lead Christine to seek the aid of a psychic (Dileep Rao) who informs her that she will be dragged to hell in three days if she is unable either to appease the demon harassing her or pawn the curse off to someone else. Thus begins the horrifyingly hilarious (or hilariously horrifying) demise of Christine Brown.
It?s not exactly Hitchcock and thankfully it?s not Eli Roth either, but Drag Me To Hell is 100% Sam Raimi. Due to the fact that you can convey the main plot of this movie in a text message, Raimi has plenty of room to let his slapstick tinged horror tendencies run wild. Every suspenseful sequence culminates in a splattered money shot of various flavours of disgusting, punctuated by a score both appropriate and unique. And this is accomplished without a single grisly onscreen death no less. Just because pimply faced high school students do not have to sneak into this film doesn?t make it any less rich and satisfying for the rest of us (unless it?s a boisterous bunch sitting next to you, of course).
Most remarkable is the fact that the film?s only casualty is an aged medium who dies without a single drop of spilt blood, let alone gruesome evisceration. Raimi cleverly puts the heroine?s immortal soul in danger as opposed to her mere physical being, and Christine ends up fighting for her afterlife more than her corporeal self. When the pre-opening credit scenes depict a cursed boy being dragged to hell decades prior to current events, the idea that his soul persists is clearly expressed. In fact, physical gore is so insubstantial that the most blood to be seen on screen comes from a harmless nose bleed (though it is worth nothing that it?s one for the ages). The movie starts of innocuously enough as the gypsy curses Christine in the parking garage after a wonderfully staged struggle to the tune of a jazzy string bass line, and it doesn?t take long before things take a turn for the creepy. When the rooms begin to creak, malevolent forces assault Christine in no short order by sweeping her up and thrashing her around.
As soon as it becomes clear that everyone involved is committed to the concept, especially Lorna Raver who plays what is possibly the most vindictive corpse in the history of cinema, thoughts begin to arise as to what an R-rated theatrical cut would have been like. While there are ample gushes of pus, bile and vomit, there?s nothing quite like the veritable fountains experienced in the Evil Dead movies. There also isn?t anything quite as shocking as the infamous ?tree rape? scene from the first Evil Dead, which easily could?ve been mimicked given the persistence of a possessed neckerchief. Dirty thoughts, to be sure, but this is a notion largely stemming from Alison Lohman?s previous escapades in a certain Atom Egoyan flick from 2005.
Still, despite the fact that the actors are fully on board for Raimi?s shenanigans, there?s not a whole heck of a lot for them to do. All that?s required of Alison Lohman is that she innocently whimpers her lines in between several rounds of supernatural abuse, and this she does admirably. While she can?t hold a deadite to Bruce Campbell?s impossibly chiselled jaw-line and charisma, that doesn?t stop her from seeming a bit too eager to frolic in mud and bile. Opposite her is Justin Long, whose primary reason for being is to advertise Apple products and play the straight man that is dubious towards all this ridiculous gypsy curse business. While he never gets smacked around by a demonic goat shadow, his character is still necessary for a secondary function: in order to illustrate that someone out there would miss Christine Brown should she get dragged to hell.
This actually leads into a rather interesting point in that the characterization is fairly messy. As bright and spunky and Christine seems, she only appears to have one other person, her boyfriend, in her life. No friends, no family, and certainly no pets after the halfway mark. The impact of a thoroughly virtuous person being potentially dragged kicking and screaming to hell for one misdeed is a tad lost when one realizes that there?s isn?t much of an argument for the protagonist?s sterling track record. There?s also a niggling little irony in that the film starts off with Christine refusing leniency to someone essentially begging for their livelihood, yet she herself demands concession for a triviality five minutes from the end. I?d like to make the case that she?s punished on account of her fickleness, but these peculiarities are hardly central to the film. One doesn?t hop on a roller coaster for the teacup experience, so why should one expect a morality play from the master of horror camp?
What simply cannot be denied is how much fun Drag Me To Hell is. It?s far from being terrifying, in fact I noticed that I tended to be laughing as others were shrieking in discomfort. Even though Raimi creates a dense horror atmosphere, it tends to amount to little more than the startle that leads to a cyclone of mayhem and superfluous bodily fluids. And there?s absolutely nothing wrong with this. People desensitized to excessive gore and sadism, whether new to Raimi?s brand of horror or nostalgic for the Evil Dead trilogy, will delight in how refreshingly entertaining it is to see a gypsy explosively vomit a bounty of insects onto a helpless bank employee. People who aren?t will be scared out of their wits.
Don?t let the words ?PG-13 Horror? dissuade you; Drag Me To Hell is the best horror movie in years. And to think that all it took was someone with a penchant for revolution to turn the aforementioned death phrase into a satisfying breath of fresh air.
Note: I still refuse to review Transformers 2.
Drag Me To Hell
PG-13 horror movies are often written off as shallow attempts by studios to increase profit at the cost of cutting away a film?s mature scenes. This basically means that what was once a topless gruesome F-bomb-a-thon becomes a watered down affair where the language and gore are toned down substantially, and the female characters are forced to wear tight scraps of clothing as opposed to nothing at all. While I?ll confess that I personally believe a sexless sex comedy to be a blatant oxymoron, exactly who?s to say that you can?t have a horror movie without gore? Effective horror has always been characterized by what is implied and not what is explicit, something that most horror filmmakers steadfastly refuse to understand.
Now we have Sam Raimi, once hyperbolic gore virtuosos extraordinaire, returning to his Evil Dead years in the 80s after taking some time off to make Columbia Pictures a few billion dollars with his rendition of Spider-Man. Drag Me To Hell is his latest film, which can be seen both as an Evil Dead spin-off and a revisitation of the genre he revolutionized. Though no matter which way you approach it, I can only think of one word to sum up this movie: Fun.
Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) is a loan officer who, eager for a promotion, denies an elderly woman an extension on her mortgage in an effort to prove to her boss that she has the ability to make tough decisions. Because antagonizing the disgusting wretch with a wandering glass eye is a sure fire way to make it to the end credits of a horror movie, Christine is assaulted and cursed in the parking garage by the vile woman shortly thereafter. Bizarre occurrences involving sentient winds lead Christine to seek the aid of a psychic (Dileep Rao) who informs her that she will be dragged to hell in three days if she is unable either to appease the demon harassing her or pawn the curse off to someone else. Thus begins the horrifyingly hilarious (or hilariously horrifying) demise of Christine Brown.
It?s not exactly Hitchcock and thankfully it?s not Eli Roth either, but Drag Me To Hell is 100% Sam Raimi. Due to the fact that you can convey the main plot of this movie in a text message, Raimi has plenty of room to let his slapstick tinged horror tendencies run wild. Every suspenseful sequence culminates in a splattered money shot of various flavours of disgusting, punctuated by a score both appropriate and unique. And this is accomplished without a single grisly onscreen death no less. Just because pimply faced high school students do not have to sneak into this film doesn?t make it any less rich and satisfying for the rest of us (unless it?s a boisterous bunch sitting next to you, of course).
Most remarkable is the fact that the film?s only casualty is an aged medium who dies without a single drop of spilt blood, let alone gruesome evisceration. Raimi cleverly puts the heroine?s immortal soul in danger as opposed to her mere physical being, and Christine ends up fighting for her afterlife more than her corporeal self. When the pre-opening credit scenes depict a cursed boy being dragged to hell decades prior to current events, the idea that his soul persists is clearly expressed. In fact, physical gore is so insubstantial that the most blood to be seen on screen comes from a harmless nose bleed (though it is worth nothing that it?s one for the ages). The movie starts of innocuously enough as the gypsy curses Christine in the parking garage after a wonderfully staged struggle to the tune of a jazzy string bass line, and it doesn?t take long before things take a turn for the creepy. When the rooms begin to creak, malevolent forces assault Christine in no short order by sweeping her up and thrashing her around.
As soon as it becomes clear that everyone involved is committed to the concept, especially Lorna Raver who plays what is possibly the most vindictive corpse in the history of cinema, thoughts begin to arise as to what an R-rated theatrical cut would have been like. While there are ample gushes of pus, bile and vomit, there?s nothing quite like the veritable fountains experienced in the Evil Dead movies. There also isn?t anything quite as shocking as the infamous ?tree rape? scene from the first Evil Dead, which easily could?ve been mimicked given the persistence of a possessed neckerchief. Dirty thoughts, to be sure, but this is a notion largely stemming from Alison Lohman?s previous escapades in a certain Atom Egoyan flick from 2005.
Still, despite the fact that the actors are fully on board for Raimi?s shenanigans, there?s not a whole heck of a lot for them to do. All that?s required of Alison Lohman is that she innocently whimpers her lines in between several rounds of supernatural abuse, and this she does admirably. While she can?t hold a deadite to Bruce Campbell?s impossibly chiselled jaw-line and charisma, that doesn?t stop her from seeming a bit too eager to frolic in mud and bile. Opposite her is Justin Long, whose primary reason for being is to advertise Apple products and play the straight man that is dubious towards all this ridiculous gypsy curse business. While he never gets smacked around by a demonic goat shadow, his character is still necessary for a secondary function: in order to illustrate that someone out there would miss Christine Brown should she get dragged to hell.
This actually leads into a rather interesting point in that the characterization is fairly messy. As bright and spunky and Christine seems, she only appears to have one other person, her boyfriend, in her life. No friends, no family, and certainly no pets after the halfway mark. The impact of a thoroughly virtuous person being potentially dragged kicking and screaming to hell for one misdeed is a tad lost when one realizes that there?s isn?t much of an argument for the protagonist?s sterling track record. There?s also a niggling little irony in that the film starts off with Christine refusing leniency to someone essentially begging for their livelihood, yet she herself demands concession for a triviality five minutes from the end. I?d like to make the case that she?s punished on account of her fickleness, but these peculiarities are hardly central to the film. One doesn?t hop on a roller coaster for the teacup experience, so why should one expect a morality play from the master of horror camp?
What simply cannot be denied is how much fun Drag Me To Hell is. It?s far from being terrifying, in fact I noticed that I tended to be laughing as others were shrieking in discomfort. Even though Raimi creates a dense horror atmosphere, it tends to amount to little more than the startle that leads to a cyclone of mayhem and superfluous bodily fluids. And there?s absolutely nothing wrong with this. People desensitized to excessive gore and sadism, whether new to Raimi?s brand of horror or nostalgic for the Evil Dead trilogy, will delight in how refreshingly entertaining it is to see a gypsy explosively vomit a bounty of insects onto a helpless bank employee. People who aren?t will be scared out of their wits.
Don?t let the words ?PG-13 Horror? dissuade you; Drag Me To Hell is the best horror movie in years. And to think that all it took was someone with a penchant for revolution to turn the aforementioned death phrase into a satisfying breath of fresh air.
Confederate Wing [http://confederatewing.blogspot.com/]
Note: I still refuse to review Transformers 2.
