Review of Drag Me to Hell (2009) by Sam — 19 Oct 2009

When I first saw this movie I knew it was a horror comedy but I was annoyed more than anything. Then I watched Evil Dead 2, which I adored, and I thought back on this movie and I 'got' it. I gave it another chance and thought it was hysterical fun.

Raimi builds up the countless jump scares in the film, but he doesn't use these scares as a way of 'legitimately' scaring you as most recent horror movies do: he uses them to entertain you, and they made me laugh incredibly hard.

Despite the PG-13 rating and almost complete lack of blood (with the exception of an amusing nose bleed), it never feels like restrained Raimi, because the scares, story, and some of the characters are all so over the top and fun that he doesn't need buckets of blood to capture the insanity he so desires (not to say that the evil dead movies didn't use buckets of blood well).

Evil Dead 2 may still be his masterpiece, but it's good to see that horror Raimi has still got it in him.