... and make it quick- please!

Rating: 2/10 (5 November 2009)

Although the ending was rather pedestrian (especially considering who the director was), I thought THE GIFT was a decent movie. Nothing to write home about, to be sure, but a minor diversion on a minor scale. The rough cut of A SIMPLE PLAN that I saw was likewise well crafted, but, again, nothing to get worked up over. The second SPIDER-MAN movie had a lot going for it, but it also had an elderly woman hanging from a building by an umbrella (and clobbering Doc Oc), not to mention yet another outing of a masked superhero (is Maguire claustrophobic?), so it, too, was a mixed bag. Cribbing from everything from CURSE OF THE DEMON to THE EXORCIST to THE HAUNTING and THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE (as well as several of the Japanese horror movies that've made the rounds the last couple of years), DRAG ME TO HELL is just plain bad. It's almost as if Raimi were sleepwalking his way through this one- or feeling his way along blindly. The "big scares" are about as uninspired as something from a Knob Zombie movie. A big disappointment.