Drag Me To Hell on DVD - Review
Director Sam Raimi Returns to Horror With Sub-Par Results
Oct 30, 2009
Drag Me To Hell, available now on DVD and Blu-Ray, allows director Sam Raimi to return to his roots. For years, Raimi was known primarily as the guy who directed the Evil Dead trilogy. There were other horror flicks that he helmed (notably 1998’s A Simple Plan and the oft overlooked gem The Gift), but nothing quite achieved the cult status of those Bruce Campbell blood baths from the ‘80s and early ‘90s.
Then he directed a little movie known as Spider-Man, and gory scripts about demon possessions became a thing of the past while he focused on the multi-million dollar story of Peter Parker battling super villains. One Spider-Man led to several sequels, and Raimi disappeared from the horror scene altogether – until 2009.
Drag Me To Hell is not only the first thriller directed by Raimi since the aforementioned film The Gift– it’s also the first non-superhero movie that Raimi has taken on since the turn of the century. To boost expectations further, Drag Me To Hell has all the elements that made Evil Dead so alluring – demon possessions, unseen entities stalking the protagonist, and just the right amount of blood.
It really is unfortunate, then, that the movie not only fails to live up to expectations, but that it also indicates that perhaps Raimi’s affair with the horror genre should come to an end.
Drag Me To Hell Features Poor Casting, Few Scares
The problems begin right away when the viewer is introduced to the worst job of miscasting since Robert De Niro played himself in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Justin Long as a university psychology professor? Someone wants viewers to believe that the arrogant little Mac guy is all grown up, but it’s too much of a stretch.
Thankfully, believability is not the intention of the film; but neither is frightening the audience. While there are a few loud noises that may cause unsuspecting viewers to jump out of their seats, the true scares are few and far between. Most of the scenes that would normally be tense and unnerving in a horror film are campier than a foreign language class taught by Freddy Krueger. How do you say, ‘Nice to meat you’ in French?
Raimi Gives Audience More Silly Than Scary
Alison Lohman is competent enough as Christine, a loan officer who angers the wrong old gypsy woman. Only when she bursts out in a violent rage at the corpse of said old gypsy woman by digging up her grave and attacking the dead body does her performance start to feel a bit silly.
But silly is what this movie aims for. After all, there is a scene where Christine is accosted by a ghoul and notices that, conveniently enough, there is an anvil hanging by a rope just above the monster’s head. One Looney Tunes gag later, she is catching her breath and all is fine.
Scenes like the one just mentioned are inexcusable and reason enough to hate this movie, but one brief eye-rolling moment would be forgivable if the rest of Drag Me To Hell were compelling enough to make it a non-issue. As it is, this big-budgeted schlock fest lacks the humor, the terror, and the bravado-infused characters of anything Raimi has produced in the past.
Drag Me To Hell shouldn't have many viewers saying, 'Play it again, Sam.' Instead, they should be telling the director to stick to the superhero genre from now on.
