Drag Me Through Hell While I Revisit Evil Dead I and II

Hello my Lovelies:
Didya think I went and died? Abandoned my blog? Decided I was too good for you?
Nah. I've just been busy with
1)Finishing up a grueling and canker-sore inducing (not kidding) Spring semester
2)Wondering why the HELL I ever wanted to go to graduate school
3)Driving back and forth to the wonderful state of Michigan
4)Sleeping and hoping somehow that will make my Clinical Project disappear
5)Not watching very many movies
6)Starting Summer semester and wondering if I'll still have my sanity when December gets here

But it doesn't matter tonight - because I just went to see Drag Me to Hell and I just know that all of you are DYING to know what I thought.
Well.
Full disclosure. Part of me kind of wanted to hate it. Because I kinda really hate Sam Raimi. Because one time, a few years ago, I read an interview where he completely dismissed his horror movie past as something he was over and that it was a way for him to get started in the business. I'm paraphrasing here but the guy said it. And I thought Look Here, F**ker, you didn't just make ONE horror movie to get your foot in the door, you F**king made THREE, you Ass! Four if you count Darkman.
So I have had full on hate in my heart for Sam Raimi since then. He's right in my Hate Box next to Tom Cruise, Mel Gibson, and Tom Hanks. And let me tell you, there is some SERIOUS hatin' going on in there.

So I was a little surprised to hear the rumors that he was thinking about remaking Evil Dead, or doing another sequel...and relieved to find out that instead, he made something entirely different.

Well, almost.

I won't give away any plot points or scares or any of the fun stuff because I purposely
read ZERO before I went to see the movie. I did glance enough at reviews to see that they were mostly pretty good, but I didn't actually read them. I only even watched like one ad, and all I remembered was the part with the fly crawling in the mouth. So even though I knew zip about the movie, I could have pretty much guessed the plot just from the title and previous Raimi movies.

It kind of goes like this:
When you unleash evil spirits, bad shit happens.

And that's fine - it's absolutely just fine with me that one line is all your movie is about. As long as you tell it in a new and interesting kind of way with good acting, some creepy visuals, and give me at least one new thing I haven't seen before, then we're good.

So without giving stuff away, I say: Go see this movie. Let's support a horror movie that isn't a sequel, or a remake. Even if it is made by a big old hypocrite. I'm willing to temporarily put the past behind me and give my money to a film like this in the hopes that more original horror movies will follow.

Without bitching too much (because, believe me, this post could have been all about the bitching of my actual experience in the movie), this film was filled with adolescents old enough to see a PG13 movie - but not old enough to drive. Apparently, just so you know, they have very weak bladders and must get up and leave the theater three or four times in a 90 minute period. I wanted to say, don't worry, when you get old like me,you'll actually be able to hold it for an entire movie. Also they must get emergency text messages a lot because many of them seemed like they had an awful lot of important messages to attend to during the movie. ANYWAY - these little assholes would never notice what I'm about to point out, so if you're 14 or never seen a Raimi film before, the following won't be of any interest to you.

One- Alison Lohman gets the Bruce Campbell experience of the new millenium as she must have some kind of bodily fluid, goo, dirt, you name it on her every fifteen minutes or so. Kind of like the Raimi tradition to torment them via fluids.

Two - the seance scene. Without giving anything away, I thought the beginning of it was probably one of the scariest things I have seen this year in a movie. Then everything changed and it became a mini-remake of Evil Dead I and II. I won't tell you what I thought, but if you see it, let me know what parts made you remember the first time you saw those movies.

More movie reviews to come......
Mother Firefly