Thursday, March 18, 2010

Drag Me to Hell (2009)

USA, 99 minutes
Director: Sam Raimi
Writers: Sam Raimi, Ivan Raimi
Photography: Peter Deming
Cast: Lorna Raver, Alison Lohman, Justin Long, Dileep Rao, David Paymer, Adriana Barraza, Chelcie Ross, Reggie Lee, Molly Cheek

I enjoyed seeing Sam Raimi working in the horror genre again—he has to console himself somehow for getting robbed of the Spiderman franchise, right?—and I get the impression he must have enjoyed it himself too because there are a lot of nice touches here along the way. My personal favorite happens to be a goat at a séance, which is very funny. Be sure to watch for that. Lorna Raver is absolutely inspired as Sylvia Ganush, the old Gypsy woman who throws a curse. Alison Lohman as Christine Brown, the overly ambitious bank employee who turns Ganush down for an extension on her overdue mortgage payments and thereby earns that curse, is adequate-plus as the youthful female tabula rasa over which all the abuse gets written. And there's plenty of chills and surprises right down the line. CGI is way overplayed, but when doesn't that happen nowadays anyway? But maybe I'm too old for the kind of heartlessness that finishes this one off? I know it's a time-honored tradition in some of the best horror movies to end on a gut-punch downbeat that also feels like a throwaway (i.e., Night of the Living Dead), so it's not as if it hasn't been done before. But come on, have a heart. Some interesting points here.

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