Drag Me to Hell (2009)
Directed by Sam Raimi
After denying a woman the extension she needs to keep her home, loan officer Christine Brown sees her once-promising life take a startling turn for the worse. Christine is convinced she's been cursed by a Gypsy, but her boyfriend is skeptical. Her only hope seems to lie in a psychic who claims he can help her lift the curse and keep her soul from being dragged straight to hell.
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27 films that influenced Drag Me to Hell
What critics say influenced Drag Me to Hell
Some music left on the cutting room floor when they were finishing The Exorcist , a mad old gypsy from the Universal monster movies, flesh-rotting ghosts straight out of J-horror, and maybe best of all, violent and assaultive sound design that recalls 1963's magnificent The Haunting.
Sometimes he takes the indirect approach (akin to Robert Wise's "The Haunting"), creating anxiety from the mundane: A handkerchief delicately wafting toward Christine's windshield is filled with foreboding.
Some music left on the cutting room floor when they were finishing The Exorcist , a mad old gypsy from the Universal monster movies, flesh-rotting ghosts straight out of J-horror, and maybe best of all, violent and assaultive sound design that recalls 1963's magnificent The Haunting.
How do I accurately describe Drag Me to Hell? Let's put it this way: if The Exorcist were re-imagined by Bugs Bunny, this is what you'd get.
It harkens back to the kind of scary movies that seem almost innocent now with their earnest occult mumbo-jumbo (think The Exorcist ) and terrified but plucky heroines (think Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween ).
Have you seen, for example, “Evil Dead 2” or its follow-up, “Army of Darkness”?
As he did in both Army of Darkness and the Spider-Man films, Murawski makes the absolute most out of every shock in Drag Me to Hell.
The script, co-written by the director and his brother Ivan (they previously collaborated on Darkman , Army of Darkness and Spider-Man 3 ) leaves no cliché unturned, but it isn't really striving for staunch originality.
But Raimi does offer a few nods to fans of that cult classic with sly references to Evil Dead and Army of Darkness inserted unobtrusively into Drag Me to Hell.
As Raimi’s fans know, long before he became a giant Hollywood player with the “Spider-Man” movie franchise, he made a name for himself with the “Evil Dead” pictures and other assorted B-movie entertainments like “Army of Darkness.”
With Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness , Raimi demonstrated that he enjoys spiking his blood and gore with satire, wit, and the Three Stooges.
Buffs will notice a nod, too, to the classic "Curse of the Demon" (although Raimi doesn't repeat that film's mistake by ever showing his fiend too clearly).
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It harkens back to the kind of scary movies that seem almost innocent now with their earnest occult mumbo-jumbo (think The Exorcist ) and terrified but plucky heroines (think Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween ).
Having been preoccupied with a little thing called the "Spider-Man" trilogy, Sam Raimi returns to his "Evil Dead" roots with "Drag Me to Hell," a funhouse ride of a supernatural thriller surrounding a demonic gypsy curse.
Spider-Man director Sam Raimi returns to his Evil Dead roots in this yucky, energetic and consistently entertaining fright movie.
This is Raimi cutting loose after spending the better part of a decade crafting the Spider-Man juggernaut, and his energy and enthusiasm are evident in every aspect of this film, from screenplay to final cut.
Director Sam Raimi ("Spider-Man") returns to his "Evil Dead" roots for this tongue-in-cheek gorefest -- one part spooky chiller, one part campy chuckler.
The question you have to ask yourself is, after his extraordinary success as director of the "Spider-Man" franchise -- to say nothing of his dramatic work with the likes of Billy Bob Thornton and Kevin Costner -- what the devil is Sam Raimi doing directing horror films again?
Let us all pause to thank our individual deities that Raimi never learned the rules, and toss in an extra thanks for his temporary withdrawal from the high-budget world of the Spider-Man movies, so he could all show us once again what Shakespeare looks like the way it's meant to be done.
Just like Catherine Deneuve in Polanski's Repulsion, Lohman is a woman in the centre of a vortex.
Just as David Cronenberg has the exploding head from Scanners (1981) as his signature shock moment, Raimi now has this.
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The script, co-written by the director and his brother Ivan (they previously collaborated on Darkman , Army of Darkness and Spider-Man 3 ) leaves no cliché unturned, but it isn't really striving for staunch originality.
So he re-teamed with his brother Ivan (his co-writer on "Army of Darkness" and "Darkman") to make another micro-budgeted, creatively gory and hilariously sadistic horror comedy -- the sort that made Raimi a cult sensation back in his "Evil Dead" heyday.
But when you think of "a Sam Raimi Film," you think about the underrated "Darkman," the offbeat "The Quick and the Dead," the over-the-top "Army of Darkness" -- Looney Tunes action, slapstick violence and a few nyuk-nyuk punchlines.
When Sam Raimi jumped from low-budget action-horror-comedy (" Darkman ," " Army of Darkness ") toward first quiet respectability (with the great, underrated " A Simple Plan " and " For Love of the Game ") and then megabuck profitability (with the " Spider-Man " films), it was great to see a real American talent succeed.
This is how the very quirky, handmade style of films such as The Evil Dead, DARKMAN and even The Quick and the Dead suddenly gave way to the incredibly impersonal style of both A Simple Plan and the maudlin sports opera For Love of the Game.
Movies like "Darkman" and his Spaghetti-O western "The Quick and the Dead" were hard to take seriously.
Raimi seems to go a bit "off the rails" during the train station climax with some Tales from the Crypt obligation for a grim twist.
Drag Me to Hell is a Creepshow installment, a high-end episode of Tales from the Crypt, a mid-’80s-style crowd-pleaser that doles out horror with a smirk and gore with a smile.