Monday, June 15, 2009

Drag Me to Hell

After being disturbed by Evil Dead and delighted Evil Dead II, I decided to host a showing of the two movies to share the madness with my friends. We then all went to the opening of Army of Darkness. We were confused (the three films vary widely in tone) but ultimately loved them all, adopting the Raimi clan and The Man, Bruce Campbell, as one of our own in geekdom.

Ever since then, Raimi's fans have been waiting for him to return to his horror roots. Oh, we've gotten hints that he hasn't forgotten us through the years. We caught the Evil Dead II homage in the chainsaw sequence from Spider-Man. Campbell is in just about every movie Raimi produces. And the Oldsmobile Delta 88 makes an appearance in Drag Me to Hell – a big appearance, actually – as it has in every Raimi movie since Evil Dead. The Oldsmobile's arrival signals that Drag Me to Hell is a quintessential Raimi horror film.

Drag Me to Hell harkens back to the golden age of 80s horror, an era Raimi helped spawn, when humor and horror were inextricably mixed thanks to Freddy Krueger's perpetual joke-machine. Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) is a cute blonde loan officer in five-inch heels working at a bank – any social commentary is surely accidental (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) – and when she turns down an old gypsy woman (Lorna Raver), things go horribly and hilariously wrong.

Raimi has always been a master of scaring you with things you can't see. He knows how to use sound to freak out the audience, employing the same shrieks and creaks he used in Evil Dead II to represent something from another dimension crossing into our world. Raimi also knows when to use silence as a tool, which just ratchets up the tension – this is the first film where I could hear the movie projector clicking away in the background. He manipulates billowing curtains and floating handkerchiefs with the methodical calculation of a Universal horror theme park, shrieking "BOO!" when the tension is at its height.

Raimi expertly manipulates the audience's affection for Christine. On the surface she's an adorable girl from the country just trying to be accepted by her big city boyfriend's parents. But as we get to know her, Christine comes off as a mewling brat more concerned about her appearance while poor people like Mrs. Ganush are being thrown out on the street. There's a turning point mid-way through the film where Christine crosses the line from being merely pathetic to reprehensible, and from there on out cat-lovers may well begin cheering her demise (I know I was!).

The similarities between Drag Me to Hell and Evil Dead II are striking (SPOILER ALERT!): an unwitting protagonist is cursed; an evil hag attacks; his friends become demonically possessed, flying around the room cackling and dancing like marionettes; the evil "gets inside him" causing him to vomit a huge amount of nasty stuff; there's a fight in a tool shed; eyes show up in weird places; eyeballs fly into somebody's mouth; even the twist ending is similar.

I didn't love this film, though I desperately wanted to. It's probably because I'm not the target audience – Drag Me to Hell is a PG-13 film and although its scares are suitably disgusting, they aren't nearly as gory as other horror movies. In other words, it's perfect for teenagers out on a date. For jaded horror fans like myself, we've seen it all before. The only thing missing is The Man himself.

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