Review of Drag Me to Hell (2009) by Sheriffn — 12 Jun 2009

I'm not going to sit here and say everything the man has put his hand to has been a work of genius (uh...Spider Man 3/Time cop??)--But when Raimi does make contact, he hits it 500 feet out of the park.

Then, after rounding the bases 10 times with superhuman speed, he rips the home plate umpire in half unleashing several thousand gallons of red and green food coloring into the crowd, who then become possessed by demons, A-Rod runs for his life, Gwar begins performing in center field.

.you get the idea. After a decade of horror movies that have catered to the extremes of cruelty, masochism, and the voyeuristic thirst for 'real life' violence (Saw, Hostel et al.), I felt refreshed and even uplifted experiencing 21st century Evil Dead style slapstick zombie-fu.

I'll concede that the plot-Hot blond chick/time released deadly curse-is not terribly original, but some themes are turned on their head in unexpected ways. At times, the audience will find itself laughing with the bad guys (cheesy floating spirits/old vomit covered lady), at the painful blunders, poor judgment, and outright misery of the good guys (home loan officer and her boyfriend, the know it all university professor).

Raimi respects that due to this topical character element, we may not want the heroine to succeed, and certainly we can say he does throw us several bones throughout the course of the film. The criticism that this film is not scary enough misses the point, and begs the question-with everything going on in the world, how can we possibly be scared by a movie? Saving that question for another day, lets just say that with Drag Me To Hell we have a classic horror storyline framed beautifully by one of the masters of the genre.

I'm not ready to call it a cult classic, or put it in the same category as ED2 until the 'multiple watch' factor has been established, but if you're not thoroughly entertained by this film.

....well....Release date for G-Force is July 24th.