My latest review which used to earn me between £1 - £1.44 earned me just 27p despired being quite ac...
My latest review which used to earn me between £1 - £1.44 earned me just 27p despired being quite actively read and commented on.... Good old Ciao
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The name Sam Raimi first rang around Hollywood 28 years ago when his low budget horror movie The Evil Dead trounced over various big budget horror movies. Evil Dead got a lot of attention and in many countries it attracted so much bad publicity it ended up being banned. Raimi stuck faithfully with the horror genre for some time trying allsorts of movies, most notably the Spiderman movies. But it was always felt that Raimi would return to the genre that made him famous, and Drag Me To Hell is that movie.
Raimi always operated on a very tongue in cheek manner, and while he likes to scare his audiences he also wants to amuse them. Drag Me To Hell is a horror movie that anyone can enjoy, even if your not that enamored with the genre.
The movie circles around Christine (Alison Lohman) who works as a mortgage advisor in a bank, promotion is on the cards but so far eludes her, even more so since the arrival of Stu an all round goody goody. In order to secure this promotion Christine will need to think outside the box and make an impression on her manager. It’s at this point that Sylvia Ganush (Lorna Raver) enters the office, an elderly gypsy Sylvia is on the verge of being evicted from her home due to lack of payment. Christine has a choice act sympathetically and anger her superiors, or act harshly and stand more chance of gaining promotion. The decision Christine makes is one she will regret for the rest of her life, and Sylvia curses Christine to be dragged to Hell, but not before she endures Hell on Earth.
I’ll probably be cursed by many for saying this but I really enjoyed Drag Me To Hell, I felt it sat firmly in a certain place in horror movie history, along with movies like Gremlins, Critters, and An American Werewolf In London.; a movie where humour is as important as the scares. Don’t get me wrong Drag Me To Hell is not the sort of movie where you will roll round laughing, but it does keep you perpetually amused, and is higher on subtle humour than horror.
Drag Me To Hell is not the sort of movie you would have fears about letting the little people see (kids just in case you wondered if I have size issues), there really is nothing too horrific for them to see its careful blend of humour and almost Indiana Jones style scares, there really is nothing too much to worry about here. Its simple simplistic and very 80’s style horror.
Lohman offers a convincing if not battered performance as a young woman driven to the edge, she’s incredibly likeable and very easy to relate to very quickly. Her companion Clay is played by recent horror regular Justin Long, again very easy to get along with. They are joined by whom I can only describe as the Indian Adam Sandler Dileep Rao, for a short time I was convinced that this was Sandler with a bad fake tan. Rao is the real star of the movie, he’s a pure casting diamond and its no wonder he has work coming out of every orifice, expect to see a lot more of this actor over the next few years, he has excellent comic timing and equally good at the more serious times.
There is not a great deal to the movie, its fairly simplistic in its story telling and straightforward if not a touch predictable in delivery. In honesty you could sum up the movie in two sentences, sometimes there is no need to watch movies that need much mental thought. Drag Me To Hell is just the sort of movie to watch when you don’t want to think much. While the die hard Raimi fans were a little disappointed with the directors return to horror, I cant help but think in years to come the movie will be more appreciated.
Drag Me To Hell is due on DVD on the 26th October, the DVD comes with a theatrical trailer for the movie.
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