Four and a Half Torches (Out of Five)
Sam Raimi really knows what he’s doing.
The film director famously first got noticed with The Evil Dead, his campy, non-budgeted 1981 horror movie that pretty much proved all you need to make a decent film is a guy with a camera.
A few years later, Raimi would team up with Evil Dead producer (and childhood buddy) Rob Tapert to create the classic fantasy TV series Xena: Warrior Princess. And in 2002, he would finally find break-out mainstream success with the first of his Spiderman movies.
None of these triumphs were flukes. This guy knows exactly how to tell a story.
Drag Me to Hell, Raimi’s first return to the horror directing chair since the second Evil Dead sequel, 1992’s Army of Darkness, is just about a perfect horror movie in every way.
Christine (Alison Lohman) is an insecure loan officer who, in order to impress her boss, refuses to grant an extension to an ugly old woman behind on her mortgage. When the woman literally gets down on her knees in the bank to beg for mercy, Christine rebuffs her.
The old woman, who turns out to be a gypsy spellcaster, casts a curse on her, declaring, “Soon it will be you who comes begging to me!”
And that’s when the “fun” begins. Christine soon discovers that the curse involves her being terrorized by an evil spirit for three days — and then that spirit will come and drag her soul straight to hell.
Raimi, who co-wrote the screenplay, is an amazingly economical director, always clear, always getting right to the point. He is the opposite of the Brian De Palma “auteur” horror director (although, to be fair, the movie does closely resemble Carrie in several respects).
There are no frills in Drag Me to Hell, no cheap gimmicks or dazzling special effects: just good, old-fashioned storytelling.
In short, Raimi is the Clint Eastwood of horror films. His subtle use of sounds and shadows is extraordinary (the film even includes several of Raimi’s wind-blowing-the-leaves Evil Dead trademark shots!).
But mostly, the movie is really, really scary.
If the movie has any flaw, it’s in several encounters with the gypsy woman that sort of go over-the-top. They’re openly played for laughs, which undercuts the admittedly intense tension.
In other words, Drag Me to Hell is an old-fashioned movie with modern sense of irony. But mostly, it’s a hell of a lot of fun.
![[Bloglines]](http://thetorchonline.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/bloglines.png)
![[Digg]](http://thetorchonline.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/digg.png)
![[Facebook]](http://thetorchonline.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/facebook.png)
![[Fark]](http://thetorchonline.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/fark.png)
![[Google]](http://thetorchonline.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/google.png)
![[Squidoo]](http://thetorchonline.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/squidoo.png)
![[StumbleUpon]](http://thetorchonline.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/stumbleupon.png)
![[Technorati]](http://thetorchonline.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/technorati.png)
![[Twitter]](http://thetorchonline.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/twitter.png)
![[Windows Live]](http://thetorchonline.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/windowslive.png)
![[Yahoo!]](http://thetorchonline.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/yahoo.png)
![[Email]](http://thetorchonline.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/email.png)
Man, that ending…
Um, yeah. Nuff said.
I loved the comical way the, for lack of a better word, fight scenes played out. The way it mixed horror with slapstick lit that little fire inside me that made me wish that all horror movies could be this way again. This is the first good horror movie to be released in over ten years, probably even longer.
But the best part of all about this movie was the fact that, if you are a fan of Evil Dead, you can see that Sam Raimi still has it in him to use all the amazing camera angles and humorous violence that make those films so memorable.
All I can say is it’s good to have Sam Raimi back where he belongs.
Now please give us Evil Dead IV…pretty please, with a chainsaw on top???