Maybe hell isn't such a bad place

Rating: Null/10 (21 September 2011)

Horror can be a tired, old, clichéd franchise. Many horrors attempt to scare the wits out of their audience by providing insanely loud noises or incredibly strong killers who refuse to die wielding a nasty weapon and some obscure face mask but Drag Me To Hell pulls itself away from both of these boring problems.
Lohman is Christine, a loan officer at the bank. She has recently been making progress in her work and is in line for a promotion to Assistant Manager. Only thing in her way is her manipulating colleague Stu (a brilliantly love to hate character played by that brilliant love to hate actor – Reggie Lee). According to her boss Stu is more willing to be aggressive, a skill recognised as highly important in the bank loaning industry. Seeing that she needs to be more firm with her customers, Christine rejects a mortgage extension to an ill, old woman with nothing left but her long term house. Christine though decides that a promotion is much more important than this old witch's life. Upon this rejection the old woman, a gypsy who can conjure black magic, sets a curse on poor Christine, a curse that will have her tormented for three days and then dragged down to the depths of hell. By enlisting the help of her boyfriend (Long) she attempts to tackle this demon before it burns her in flames.
Drag Me To Hell brings back the typical old school horror, reverting back to previous Raimi classic The Evil Dead. The thing is though with the technology imputed into films of today, this approach seems to wear thin and instead of finding myself scared, I found myself laughing. Raimi may have had this in mind and attempted to make this film in that way but where the pea soup for sick worked in The Exorcist it fails here. Filmmaking has moved on in such a way that most audience members like to see things look a little more realistic. (Not saying that CGI makes things anymore realistic but brown goo doesn't either)
Having said that though this film isn't that bad. The scares are still there just shown in a different form. The high screeching music and the brilliant sound affects mean you could close your eyes and really imagine what is happening on that screen. The different thrills in seeing an eye opening in your cake or an old woman try to eat your face without any teeth. These things people not only freaked me but sent a tingle down my spine.
The acting and directing of the film is not up to the participating people's usual standard. Lohman is sometimes good and as soon as you think that, she acts in a way that makes you strip it all back. Long is even worse but whether this is the script, the acting or the casting is another thing. He just doesn't seem old enough to be a college professor with bag fulls of knowledge. In fact the only actor I really liked in the film was Reggie Lee. Maybe this was Raimi's objective all along though. To implore a sort of sixties feel to a naughties movie. Lame special effects, poor acting, comic horror. If that's what he was going for than to be fair he did succeed.
All in all Drag Me To Hell does bring a fresh view of entertainment. Something different for all to watch as it is not entirely what you expect. I didn't mind this film but I think that those who loved Raimi's classic The Evil Dead will love it and those who don't or haven't seen it will find this cheap and nasty.