Drag Me To Hell (2009)

Since I’ve been a huge fan of the Evil Dead series for years, I was excited back when director Sam Raimi was going to tackle my favorite superhero, Spider-Man. Needless to say, as Spider-Man (2002) and it’s seemingly non-stop sequels have continued to stink up theaters, I’ve been long-awaiting Raimi to go back to horror, which he excelled at.

Finally, this May, that’s going to happen, as Raimi directs new horror flick Drag Me To Hell. But, will this film, like my obviously erroneous reflections on Raimi tackling the webhead, lead to just more misfirings from Raimi, or will Raimi finally give fans something worth watching again?

Since he’s more familiar with the horror genre – and has proved he knows how to make a good horror film or two (as opposed to the horrific ones he’s made as of late), there’s a better possibility Raimi may be finally back to delight fans once again in the horror genre.

True, the movie looks rather typical of horror films these days – a good image/scene or two, and the rest just filler. In this case, that scene from the preview looks to be the fly slipping between Christine’s lips while she’s choking, only to have her wake up a moment later choking.

True, Grudge (2004) and other more recent entries in the horror genre have been able to expand enough on that one scene to give viewers a decent thrill (and in some cases, even provide viewers with more than one scary sequence), but most horror films these days seem okay with the quqick shock, rather than the building tension.

Whether Drag Me To Hell will be able to provide more than just a quick shock or two remains to be seen, but – if I hadn’t already heard that Raimi was going to be back to direct Spider-Man 4, I would have seen Drag Me To Hell in theaters just to show how much I appreciate Raimi hanging up the webs and getting back to what he’s good at.

Probably the biggest problem facing this movie, however, is the hard economic times we’re currently facing. Since the main character (the “good girl”) is a loan officer, may public backlash against banks in general make the viewer slowly start to root just a bit for Mrs. Ganush? I’d say it’s not only possible, but likely. Taking the loan officers down a notch? Who wouldn’t want to do that in today’s rough economy? Sure, the old hag may go a bit to the extreme, but folks may connect with her a bit more than Raimi expects.

Guess we’ll have to wait and see how this one works out once it hits public consumption.