Movie Summary of Drag Me To Hell by Michael The Moviegoer.
DRAG ME TO HELL = ***
“Scream Till You Laugh”
After nearly a decade directing the “Spider-Man” movies, Sam Raimi returns to his schlock-horror film roots with all the giddy joy of a man discovering a second childhood. Unlike his early schlock, “Evil Dead”, Raimi’s filmmaking skills have been sharpened over the years. So improved quality is evident in his latest “Drag Me To Hell”.
But since Raimi’s early days there have been countless parodies of this genre, especially with the “Scary Movie” franchise and Wes Craven’s “Scream” series. Once a genre becomes a target for laughs, it becomes harder to go back to taking the conventions and cliches seriously. Therefore, it’s not always easy to tell if “Drag Me To Hell” is shooting for the laughs it gets, or if people are just laughing at it. But despite some silliness, the movie is consistently entertaining.
Alison Lohman is absolute perfection as a bank loan officer who makes the bad decision to foreclose on the home of an old one-eyed gypsy woman (who turns out to be harder to kill than the terminator!). The woman puts a curse on Lohman that results in a series of events involving some demonic creature trying to drag her down into hell.
The movie is only as scary as a rollercoaster ride in an amusement park. Most of the frights come from loud random sound effects that could drown out a Metallica concert. Louder does not make a film scarier. “The Exorcist”, one of the most frightening films of all time, has an oddly minimal soundtrack, with the quietest moments being the creepiest. But if you’re the type who finds fright in a girl being attacked by killer cocktail napkins, then Sam Raimi is your man.
DVD Watch: A much more intelligent film about the devil coming to collect souls is Alan Parker’s 1987 masterpiece “Angel Heart”. Robert DeNiro is the devil who is searching for a man who sold his soul for fame, but may now be trying to back out of the deal by changing his identity. Beautifully shot in Louisiana and heavy on symbolism, the story and images in “Angel Heart” will stay in your head long after the movie has ended.
Michael The Moviegoer
