Drag me to Hell (Raimi) - Quelle horreur
Drag me to Hell is well directed by Sam Raimi or is it the film feels like it has been orchestrated. Raimi waves the baton summoning up the dead, throwing them around and placing them in surprising positions. A film in two gears slow then fast, slow again and that is horror Raimi style. Think back to the Evil Dead (1981) when all seems relaxed and friends unload the car for a weekend away in the woods, someone is looking. In Drag Me To Hell someone is indeed looking. She is old, dentally challenged and offers a curse.
A curse on all your houses well perhaps only those houses due for repossesion. Bad luck for Christine Brown played by Alison Lohman who calls in a loan from an old lady called Mrs Ganush. As you can imagine she does not take it well, causes a scene in the bank and leaves behind a curse on poor Christine. The morality of the film kicks in, her hardline with the loan is to show her boss that she can be tough so a promotion could be her curse or reward.
What follows is battle to the death or is she alive? were dark forces, an old lady and a soundtrack to scare you from your seat conspire to drag her to hell. The film in some respects feels like Aliens (1986). Christine becomes Ripley and does battle not with an alien but something much scarier, it seems inevitable she will be dragged to hell.
Visually the film is creative like a scene were the ghoul pursuing her shows up on a mobile phone screen. CGI is everywere but rather then being obvious it has contextual feel of the real.
Wes Craven did his film The People Under the Stairs (1991) were two burglars break into a house seemingly owned by a ghoulish couple who hoard the cash and look like Ronald and Nancy Reagan. The People Under the Stairs is horror film that satirises Reagans American were rich and poor really are upstairs downstairs with no money coming down. Drag me To Hell has this in mind clearly setting up the bank worker who does the bad deed and gets her dues. However Lohan gives us a character who we can route for, we take her side and forgive her banking sins. Side stories give her a boyfriend who is an all Amercian academic and her possible savior comes as Rham an Indian fortune teller who takes the job but then sub contracts the work to someone who has dealt personally with the demon.
The film is a tour de force of horror that combines the classic supernatural of the haunted house film with the speed and spectacle of modern horror films like Saw. However this film is much better than Saw and Hostel. The film right up to the end leaves the question as to whether hell will indeed foreclose on the soul of Christine Brown.
The influence of Nosferatau is eveident in this clip.
