Skip to main contentSam Raimi's return to horror (that is, horror beyond Peter Parker dancing) was screened after WW press deadlines. Here's Chris Stamm's review:
Drag Me to Hell
The hell of other people? Of mewling children and packed malls? Of bullies and bureaucracy? Of sickos and psychos? All scary as heck. But Argento's witches and Fulci's emissaries of the beyond? Pea soup spit-up and spinning heads? The mark of the beast and the bark of the devil? Could be my dimestore Catechism wasn't dark enough to do lasting damage, but hell-with-a-capital-h very rarely delivers the necessary shiver-shock of true horror. When I'm in the market for a new nightmare, I'll take a man wearing a mask over fire and brimstone every time.more
Demons and curses and red lava lakes are the cartoon versions of real terror, and playing up the absurdity of eternal damnation is how Sam Raimi made his name. With Drag Me to Hell, he returns to the goofy realm of malediction and prayer, of grossed-out giggles and groans. Alison Lohman, a refinement of the Jenna Fischer model of mousiness, stars as Christine Brown, whose professional aspirations are as dull as her name. Looking to prove her mettle and climb the ladder in her loan department, Christine denies a crone's request for a mortgage extension. With her bejewelled fingers tapering to crusty yellow nails, her mismatched eyes and her Slavic croak, old Mrs. Ganush is clearly a Gypsy witch, so instead of asking to speak to Christine's manager, she calls a curse down on the perky little loan officer's pretty little head.
What follows is, for the most part, a dispiritingly rote exercise in comic dread. Raimi's sick sense of humor quickens the routine at intervals, never more so than in two uproarious scenes of animal sacrifice, but Drag Me to Hell squanders an ungodly amount of screen time on needless narrative explication. Imagine a version of Army of Darkness in which Bruce Campbell's Ash sits around whinging about the Necronomicon instead of questing after it. And sure, the horror that interrupts Christine's lethargy is thrillingly ridiculous, if a bit too reliant on humorous fluids and cheap digital effects, but there's simply not enough of it.
Raimi is a master designer of rickety, haunted house set pieces. He is not a great storyteller, and he doesn't write characters anyone can actually care about. That's fine. In fact, I prefer not to bond too much with people who are about to be eviscerated. But then why the endless chatting and dithering and over-explaining by characters who seem so anxious to get it all over with that they've pre-emptively stiffened with rigor mortis? The legitimately pleasing touches of absurdity—a possessed slice of cake, a coughed-up cat, Justin Long as a psychology professor—just aren't worth the struggle it takes to make it through long stretches of apathetic moviemaking. PG-13. CHRIS STAMM.
Drag Me to Hell opens Friday at Broadway Metro 4 Theatres, Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing, Century Eastport 16, Cinema 99 Stadium 11, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 IMAX, City Center Stadium 12, Cornelius 9 Cinemas, Division Street Stadium 13, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Hilltop 9 Cinema, Lloyd Center Stadium 10 Cinema, Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Oak Grove 8 Cinemas, Sandy Cinemas, Sherwood Stadium 10, Tigard 11 Cinemas, Wilsonville Stadium 9 Cinema.
WWeek 2015