PLOT:Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) is a young woman from the midwest trying to fit in in the big city. She’s one of those blond, soft spoken, kind to puppies and children types who always makes the right decision…until the day an old gypsy woman enters the bank she works at. Mrs. Ganush (Lorna Raver) has defaulted on her home loan twice already and she begs our heroine to give her one more chance. Christine really wants to help, but her manager implies that if she doesn’t grow a pair and deny the extension, she won’t get the promotion she so desperately wants. She returns to the dirty nailed, phlegmy old lady and tells her no. Let’s just say that pissing off a gypsy is NOT a good idea…
REVIEW: I never thought I’d say this. Never. But I have officially forgotten SPIDERMAN 3. I want to hug Sam Raimi. I want to hug him like I did back in the days of EVIL DEAD. (And XENA..yeah, I watched it. So did you. And you loved it in all it’s goofy glory.) DRAG ME TO HELL is pure, classic horror. The sequences are brilliant. The scares (don’t faint) are actually scary. The kills, the bodily fluids…seriously, the poor girl is just drowning in them…
I see a lot of horror films and it takes a lot to make me jump. DRAG ME TO HELL made me feel like a seatbelt on my chair wouldn’t have been a bad idea. The sequence in the parking garage where the old bat attacks Christine in her car after the loan refusal had me leaping out of my seat, squealing at the grossness and whooping with the rest of the audience. The scene is a absolute tour de force. (People were giving each other high fives while talking about it after the screening.)
The woman’s curse is so evil that even her snotty handkerchief will scare the crap out of you. She’s sympathetic. She’s creepy. She’s really, really gross. I predict that, post May 29th, Mrs. Ganush will be on every list of top horror characters of all time.
There are so many great scenes and I don’t want to spoil any of it for you by telling you what they are. All I’ll say is that there is a graveyard scene that will keep you up nights and a séance with a goat..yes, a goat…that you won’t be able to stop talking about.
The casting is excellent as well. Lohman may not have been the first person cast as Christine, but she brings exactly the right mix of innocence and desperation. And clearly a willingness to do just about anything in the name of filmmaking. That girl is a trooper…and probably needs some mouthwash. Just see it and you’ll know what I mean. And Raver is just amazing…god, I hope there is a sequel. The character is too awesome not to return.
Raimi got the tone just right here, balancing humor (Remember “A Farewell to Arms”?) and horror perfectly. In a land of torture porn and bad Japanese remakes, this is a breath of fresh, um, graveyard scented air. It’s got the prerequisite hot chick, it’s got a scary-ass villain (with an actual reason for being evil) and, believe it or not, a well-written story. It’s got plenty of good scares and plenty of good laughs. It’s got a freaking stapler attack. It’s even got the Mac guy. (And Justin Long does an excellent job being the straight man, which makes me giggle after his amazing cameo in ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO.) The only thing missing here is a cameo from Bruce Campbell.
RATING: 9/10