Much like the Army of Darkness director’s cut with the famous Ash vs. That joke has been replaced in favor of a more Unrated version of the scene. There is a joke that is an editorial smash cut involving a cat. NOTE: Review is for the Unrated Director’s Cut, which is the preferred cut with the exception of one item. Drag Me to Hell is Raimi at his controlled best. It’s a risky gamut that Drag Me to Hell runs but it proves to be the most successful horror film of Raimi’s career. In those moments where Christine is fighting against everything in her nature to scream out, is both actor and director at their best. This is no more evident than a truly horrifying and painful dinner scene. Telling Christine history through the moments that Raimi gives her. Lohman is able to strike the right tone with Raimi’s material. The visual clues, moments like the speech therapy CDs, and Lohman’s unspoken behavior are fascinating clues to her character. Lohman plays Christine as someone trying to erase their previous life from existence but somehow unable to escape it. You feel every bump, scrape, bruise, nose geyser, and bodily fluid thrown (literal and figurative) at Christine. Raimi’s gamut is helped enormously by Lohman’s amazing work. He understands those “final girl” conventions better than most and plays them to the hilt. Lohman’s work as the gentle Christine automatically puts you on her side, Raimi counts on it. Raimi never hides this fact and even shows us what happens to a small child that crosses paths with the Lamia. You may not want to admit it but you know that Christine is not getting out of this predicament. The film’s success is implicitly tied to Raimi’s dogmatic adherence to the rules of this story he’s created and Lohman’s great empathetic work. Ganush (Lorna Raver in an amazing performance that both repels and imbues sympathies) the film is unleashed to disrupt everything in Christine’s life. Once Christine is cursed by the elderly Mrs. It’s the perfect distillation of narrative drive and force. The screenplay manages to be more than a justification for a series of gags and set pieces. Part of that success is due to the script that he and brother Ivan Raimi wrote. The film is successful at being able to pull off not only the set pieces but sustained tension and dread more than any other of Raimi’s work in horror. Drag Me to Hell find Raimi at his stylishly torturous best. The film, much like Raimi’s other work, puts its heroine through the ringer with a certain amount of glee. It’s the inevitability and your thinking that Christine will find a solution that wrestles every bit of tension out of the film. Raimi’s narrative never lets Christine off the hook even for a second, there is no simple out. Christine though a good person, makes one selfish impulsive decision that starts the film’s plot in motion. Only the true horror fans and Raimi acolytes understood the subversive horror comedy was much more than its Rating and the initial reception.ĭrag Me to Hell is a nasty bit of business that often times plays as sneaky as the Lamia, the demon sent to torment Christine (Alison Lohman) before, as the title states, she is dragged to hell. Many, audiences and critics alike, dismissing the film as nothing more than trite PG-13 horror that was en vogue at the time. Drag Me to Hell has suffered the most from this shadow. No film, including his first two Spider-Man films, has ever been able to shake the comparison to the iconic Bruce Campbell led horror trilogy. The Evil Dead Trilogy casts a long shadow over director Sam Raimi’s career. Scream Factory does a great job with the transfer but the special features come up a bit thinner than one would expect… It may prove to this reviewer as a worthy contender for best Sam Raimi horror film. The underseen Raimi horror film deserves discovery beyond the horror fans who praise it, and justifiably so. Adam takes a look at the beautiful edition Collector’s edition of Sam Raimi’s Drag Me to Hell being released by Scream Factory.
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