Monday, August 3, 2009

DRAG ME TO HELL

“DRAG ME TO HELL” (Alison Lohman)

This movie is so extraordinarily awful & ridiculous it’s bound to become a ‘cult classic’... it is THAT stupid. Yes, many scenes are meant to be laughed at – yet Director/Co-Writer Sam Raimi clearly intends to ‘gross out’ his audience as well.
So what you have is a total mess; a film that can’t decide if it wants to be a ‘legitimate’ horror movie or a campy ‘spoof’ of the genre.
Why Alison Lohman interrupted a promising career to star in this low-rent vehicle is beyond me (I guess Lindsay Lohan was too wasted to sign on the dotted line)
Alison plays Christine Brown, the head of the ‘loans’ dept. at a bank where she’s vying against newcomer/office suck-up ‘Stu’ for the Assistant Manager’s position.
When a disgusting looking old woman named Mrs. Ganush(Lorna Raver) shows up at her desk asking for a third extension on her home loan, Christine decides to play hardball with the old bat & turns her down. Mrs. Ganush goes ballistic & puts a curse on Christine by pulling a button from her jacket (Don’t ask, I won’t tell)
When creepy shadows start following Christine around & rattling her pots & pans, she
goes to a fortune teller (Rham Jas) who tells her she’s been cursed & the demon called Lamia will haunt her for 3 days & then take her to hell on the 4th day unless she can somehow remove the curse.
Some of the movie’s campy-ness works; when Christine is invited to meet & have dinner with her boyfriend’s parents & she sees Mrs. Ganush’s glass eye staring at her from her slice of cake – THAT was eerie & funny. When Christine & Mrs. Ganush ‘do battle’ in a parking garage – THAT was meant to cater to the lowest common denominator of entertainment values.
I’ve never had a problem with Justin Long before, but in his role as Christine’s boyfriend, college professor Clay Dalton, Long sucks big time. Not for one single second did I buy him as a college professor. Plus, Alison is much too pretty to be matched with an unattractive personality-challenged bore like Clay Dalton.
Why, you ask, would I go see something like ‘Drag Me To Hell’? I grew up on the horror monster classics (Frankenstein, Dracula & The Wolf Man) & even though I can’t stand the ‘slasher’ type films that came along later, I’ve always been a sucker for a good demonic possession or something that tried to pay homage to the monster films of my youth (meaning ‘Van Helsing’ specifically) I read that ‘DMTH’ was a ‘throw-back’ to the way horror movies used to be made, so when it came to the Gateway theatre in Federal Way, & the temperature rose into the 90’s, I paid a dollar to cool off & watch a movie I knew my wife would have no interest in seeing.
Bad thing about only paying $1 to see a movie – Riff raff. The audiences are atrocious; its as though they feel it is their duty to try & spoil the movie for everyone else by trying to be as annoying as possible throughout the show. Cell phones are not turned off, comments are not whispered & one large group of teens sat in the first few rows & didn’t even appear to watch the screen at all.
Needless to say, I won’t be going on $1 Tuesday ever again, since this is the same type of aggravation I had to put up with the last time I attended a ‘cheap’ showing...
Back to the film itself, I will say that the final scene did bring a smirk to my face – so it has a positive ending going for it. Since it only cost me a buck to see ‘Drag Me To Hell’ I don’t feel cheated out of my money – Like I said, it’s sooo bad, it’s actual kind of fun to watch – If I didn’t know better, I’d think that Ed Wood returned from the dead & inhabited Sam Raimi’s body for the sole purpose of coming back to make the ‘Plan 9 From Outer Space’ of the 21st century. It's a wonder Sam didn't credit the name Alan Smithee for directing this...

4 comments:

movie luva said...

I grew up on the Saturday live action/cartoon. It was cool for 8-12 year olds. Now I have seen it on cartoon channel or something like that and it's over the top hokey with claymation ( like Davey and Goliath ) and the acting looks like people you just pulled off the street. So I had no interest in a movie about the show. Plus, I'm really burning out on Will Ferrell.

movie luva said...

Damn... you know I'm tired when I'm commenting on the wrong movie !

movie luva said...

OK... Drag Me To Hell, I was a fan personally, of all the old Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi collaborations and The Evil Dead series. If you knew anything about those, you'd know Raimi went back to was his horror/schlock roots for his fans love, and Drag Me To Hell was just that.

I can fully understand a person not familiar with the Raimi old Evil Dead stuff would think it was bad. Actually that's the tag. That's what his horror fans expect.

Raimi's next film will be his direction of Dennis Lehane's The Given Day.

Terry Reid said...

Actually there IS kind of a correlation between 'Land Of The Lost' & 'Drag Me To Hell' in that they're both aimed at audiences much younger than I (I won't be so snooty as to say those of lesser intelligence because I'm not all that bright)
I've actually been telling people that 'Drag Me To Hell' IS worth seeing once just because it is so off the wall awful it's funny.
& other than the opening & closing bits with Matt Lauer, 'Lost' is just awful.
Having only seen parts of 2 episodes of the emabarrassingly bad Tv show, I would still have to say that the movie isn't 'about' the show at all. Other than a monkeyman that looks like ex-member of Jefferson Airplane & rubber lizard men, the 3 time travelers are all grown up, there aren't any kids involved - but yeah, Will Ferrell had worn out his welcome (especially since he was never all that funny to begin with!)
& you are correct in that I have no idea what 'The Evil Dead' series is all about. Never even heard of it.