Seeing as Halloween is right around the corner, it seems fitting to review some horror films. Tonight, the movie is director Sam Raimi's horror/comedy "Drag Me To Hell."
Writer and director Sam Raimi is probably best known to mainstream audiences for his take on the Spider-Man trilogy, but for his biggest fans, its his horror films that define his career. In fact, Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness are two of my favorite films. As much as I enjoyed the Spider-Man movies, I was glad to see Raimi return to the horror genre and bring us another enjoyable scary flick.
The movie centers around Christine Brown, (Alison Lohman) a former farm girl now living in the city working as a loan agent. Determined on obtaining a promotion, she turns down an elderly woman for a loan extension on her home. In response, the woman places a deadly curse on Christine that will condemn her soul to the depths of Hell in three days.
It's always a breath of fresh air to see a well-done horror movie. The genre is littered with low budget straight-to-DVD quality crap that give the genre a bad name. First off, the movie is genuinely suspenseful. Though it does occasionally resort for some gimmicky jumps and shock moments, a majority of the film is legitimately scary. That being said, Sam Raimi did throw in some of his trademark slapstick humor as well. Some of the more gross moments of the film are reminiscent of the Evil Dead trilogy, also directed by Raimi. The acting was overall pretty good. Alison Lohman was convincing for most of the film as the Hell-bound protagonist. Justin Long does a solid job as Christine's supportive boyfriend. His performance was decent overall, but his facial expressions at the end of the movie, though brief, were very effective. Another stand out performance was Lorna Raver as the creepy Mrs. Ganush, the one responsible for placing the curse on Christine. The story was by no means Oscar-worthy, but it got the job done. It had a few twists along the way and the ending was appropriately disturbing.
Not too much to complain about really. The cgi could have been better. Some of the more gimmicky scares were ultimately ruined by either lame cg or poor execution. Some of the characters weren't particularly innovative or original, nothing horrible but nothing amazing either. For a horror film, the gore factor was fairly tame (this is a good thing) but it did have an abundance of gross-out moments that were a tad bit too excessive. If the ending doesn't leave a bad taste in your mouth, the vomit scenes will.
Overall, it was a great movie. I enjoyed it and would definitely recommend it for horror fans or anyone looking for a quality scary movie.
My Score: 4/5
No comments:
Post a Comment