{"id":4650,"date":"2009-06-11T21:31:33","date_gmt":"2009-06-12T05:31:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=4650"},"modified":"2009-06-19T16:42:36","modified_gmt":"2009-06-20T00:42:36","slug":"drag-me-to-hell-sam-raimi-2009-usa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=4650","title":{"rendered":"Drag Me To Hell (Sam Raimi, 2009): USA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Byron Potau<\/a>.\u00a0 Viewed at Metro 4 Theater in Santa Barbara, CA.<\/p>\n

\"\"With our economy floundering it was only a matter of time until we saw it reflected in our movies.\u00a0 In Sam Raimi\u2019s Drag Me To Hell<\/a><\/em> we see what happens to those bank loan officers when they foreclose on the wrong person…probably the only time we will see the bank as the good guys.<\/p>\n

Christine (Alison Lohman) is the bank loan officer vying\u00a0for the assistant manager promotion\u00a0with her coworker, Stu (Reggie Lee).\u00a0 When the elderly and repulsive Mrs. Ganush (Lorna Raver) asks for yet another extension on her mortgage payment, Christine refuses in the hopes that her boss, Mr. Jacks (David Paymer), can see that she can make the tough decisions.\u00a0 Mrs. Ganush does not take the news very well, and puts a curse on Christine that takes three days to blossom, after which a spirit will drag Christine to hell to feast on her soul.\u00a0 During the three days, the spirit is able to manifest itself in various ways to haunt, and even strike her, and so Christine must \u00a0find a way to appease the spirit or remove the curse.<\/p>\n

Writer\/Director Sam Raimi\u2019s previous horror series, the Evil Dead films, comes to mind not only because of the similarities in makeup, but because both that series and this film share a common tongue in cheek sense of humor–and it succeeds as well here as it did before.\u00a0 All the sympathy is with Christine as Lorna Raver gives an over the top performance as Mrs. Ganush, who is made as grotesque as can be right down to the exaggerated sounds of her false teeth slowly pulled from her mouth.\u00a0 Raimi uses every opportunity to spill the foulest of substances, from vomit, blood, mucus etc., into the mouth and face of poor Alison Lohman, who we must applaud being a good sport about it.\u00a0 Raimi\u2019s tactics for scaring us include undead zombie-like beings, or other things popping out unexpectedly, punctuated by a blaring soundtrack to hammer it home.\u00a0 The film\u2019s best performance is from Dileep Rao who, as a fortune teller who tries to help Christine shed the curse, and is both likable and believable.\u00a0 The\u00a0scares owe too much to the soundtrack and gimmicks rather than real suspense, but\u00a0this is certainly Raimi\u2019s best film since A Simple Plan. \u00a0It is an enjoyable and funny film that has a nice surprise ending that does not copout like films of this sort often do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Byron Potau.\u00a0 Viewed at Metro 4 Theater in Santa Barbara, CA. With our economy floundering it was only a matter of time until we saw it reflected in our movies.\u00a0 In Sam Raimi\u2019s Drag Me To Hell we see what happens to those bank loan officers when they foreclose on the wrong person…probably […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-films"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4650\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}