Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce the most misunderstood movie of the year: Sam Raimi’s horror-flick, Drag Me To Hell. I say misunderstood, as never before have I seen as many mainstream popcorn munchers state that “It’s more a comedy than a horror”, totally defying logic. It’s Sam Raimi, d*ckheads; it’s intended to be a comedic horror. Since when was laughing a bad thing? Oh, my mistake, you’re probably the same people who helped the likes of The Unborn and The Haunting in Connecticut invade the top ten of the box office. So if you haven’t yet seen Drag Me To Hell, then yes, it is funny. It’s also scary. Enough ranting, onto the reviewing!
Drag Me To Hell is the latest flick from the man behind the Spider-Man and Evil Dead franchises, Sam Raimi. On the surface, it would appear that the film is a conventional horror movie, however dig a little deeper into the roots of the project and it’s a whole different beast. It seems that following the misfire that was Spider-Man 3, and with Spider-Man 4 waiting patiently to be green-lit, Drag Me To Hell is a therapeutic escape to horror roots for Raimi. Ala Evil Dead, it provides Raimi with an opportunity to forget logic for a little while and just concentrate on scaring the hell out of the audience through a simple narrative, and some typically clichéd voyeuristic shots. Regarding the narrative, the story focuses on Christine Brown (Alison Lohman), a loan officer, who ends up on the receiving end of an ancient curse when she fails to grant the morbid Mrs. Ganush (Lorna Raver) with a mortgage extension. Fair enough, only the curse starts to tear her world apart as poor Christine suffers a bucketload of horrific penances. Oh, and the curse isn’t very keen to negotiate either: it has a three-day deadline, where the victim is ‘dragged’ to hell if they fail to somehow overcome it in this period of time. Heavy stuff.
Over the course of the intentionally straightforward narrative, Drag Me To Hell relies on juxtaposing scares with laughter. For example, it’s fairly jumpy stuff seeing a deranged old woman leap at Christine out of nowhere, gnawing at her chin… only she’s forgotten to put her false teeth in! Speaking of gnawing, now would be a good time to mention how the mouth is a recurring motif as a source of horror in the film. Whether its flies crawling in, or vomit pouring out, the mouth is certainly the most commonly used part of the body to create a sense of disgust in Drag Me To Hell. It’s not just tangible elements in place to make you afraid though; conventional, classic voyeuristic shots will have you screaming, “BEHIND YOU!!!”, at the innocent Christine more times than the average childhood pantomime.
Moreover, Alison Lohman manages to pull off a fairly successful representation of Christine. However, she suffers in sequences with dialogue, failing to portray believable emotion, somewhat ruining that visceral horror experience, and shattering our willing suspense of disbelief. The real show-stealer is Lorna Raver as the deranged Mrs. Ganush, who courtesy of a tremendous job from the costume design department, pulls off a genuinely haunting display. The rest of the cast are fairly so-so, but complete the job successfully enough, with no totally disastrous performances from any of the cast.
In addition, all is fair and good having a relatively successful cast, but a film with a primary objective to shock needs to, well, shock. Fortunately, it does, taking the audience on a rollercoaster ride of the emotions, following the classic foreboding/shock/comedy formula. A prime example comes in the form of a scene where Christine is having her fortune read, with forty-five seconds of silence together with a gradually intensifying non-diegetic soundtrack suddenly broken by a series of flashes and screams. The audience jump, recover, and laugh about it, before returning to the movie to be a victim to the familiar formula once again. Ever seen one of those prank videos on YouTube, making you really concentrate on a serious topic before scaring the hell out of you with the sudden appearance of a horrific image/sound? Drag Me To Hell frequently brings this structure to the big screen, simply because the film realises it works, and boasts about it.
To conclude, it’s always nice to see a talented director back in shape. Let’s hope M Night Shyamalan takes a leaf out of Raimi’s book in terms of resuscitating a troubled career.
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Funny, scary, and easy to follow, Drag Me To Hell is everything you want from a summer-horror flick. Just don’t go into the cinema expecting a deeply engrossing narrative, or rich character development, and it’s a film you’ll most certainly leave with a smile on your face.
3/5
