Drag Me To Hell (2009)

An early Drag Me To Hell review, courtesy of trusted source ‘Tobey Maguire’.

Got into a secret pre-screening of Sam Raimi’s “Drag Me to Hell” movie and damn. SO good.

First, when they said “a work in progress” they weren’t kidding. The footage was weirdly digitized and mostly blurry. Don’t know what caused that, it looked like YouTube quality.

But it didn’t matter. Even the unfinished VFX didn’t matter. This movie was so good it had the entire audience in the palm of its gnarled, witchy hand.

If you like Evil Dead you’ll like this. Sure, it’s PG-13 (or so they claim), so it’s not gory and there’s no bad language. But still in the first ten minutes a little boy gets dragged to hell in gruesome fashion and the whole thing is very messed up.

The story is simple: a bank teller refuses a loan to an old lady who turns out to be a witch. Chaos ensues.

And I mean chaos. We’re talking gypsy curses, ghosts, and goat demons. From the first attack to the end of the movie, it seems like every ten seconds something’s getting broken or something is getting killed. It’s REALLY tense from start to finish. I went in expecting a straight comedy like the final Evil Dead flick and was REALLY surprised how scary and intense the movie was.

But the movie does have its funny moments, like the kitty murder scene and the talking goat scene and the countless times the witch vomits some weird substance all over the hot chick.

Overall, I was surprised how clever the script was and how good the acting was. In particular, Justin Long is great. I mean, he’s relaxed and funny most of the time and then comes this INTENSE part at the end that I won’t spoil, but his performance is heart wrenching.

his movie twists and turns all the time. The plot is very simple, but it does a lot of things you don’t expect or normally see in movies. It’s so refreshing to see something so original.

This is a return to form for Raimi, who really blew it with Spider-Man 3. I hope he makes more movies like this in the future.

Director: Sam Raimi
Cast: Alison Lohman, Justin Long, Lorna Raver, David Paymer
Release Date: 29 May 2009
Grade: A-

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