DRAG ME TO HELL Post Release - Page 19

Well he was right in that Avatar thread about nerds giving Raimi a pass for cribbing the comic book story. Plus, he stays chocolatey in milk.

I'm just wondering, what does SPIKE MARSHALL think about this hootenanny, huh?

It disgusts him. He's leaving for good.

Who gives a shit if Cameron/Raimi cribbed some shit? As long as the movie itself is entertaining. Oh no, The Terminator ripped off some Harlan Ellison stuff I NOW RETROACTIVELY HATE IT

In summation: Sylvia Ganush's granddaughter is fucking hot.

I will punch you right in your flux capacitor.
Madonna carries around a plack bearing this quote at all times. True story.

On point, Scratch, if you can't enjoy a movie where a fly rubs its little fly hands together before flying into an unsuspecting victim's nose, well, I just feel sorry for you. You probably also hate sex and pizza.

A plack.

Cut the guy some slaque.

Enough with the attachs.

Oh, wow, now I feel stupid.
I swear I know how to spell the word correctly: it's "plach", right?

...or is it "plahczyck" (the z is silent)?

Sigh, I'm just going to go and rest my head now.

Boy, you guys don't let any mistakes slip through the craques.

Dead hoarse, people

Can't you peephole just leave me a loan?

Yeah this thread's still awful, but Chocula's rage made me smile. I think I may have done a 180 on him/her/it.

edit: nevermind.

ANYWAYS.

To say one does not like horror mixed with cartoonish humor is to say that one does not like Raimi. He owns this cartoonish-humor/horror genre.

Now, to be fair, Alison Lohan and Justin Long, as much as I love the two, did not interest me nearly as much as The Chin. Having seen Spiderman 2, I know Raimi can handle character moments and action much better than in DRAG ME TO HELL. Still, it's Raimi returning to a form he owns. It's one of the best movies of the year.

True story: Django turned this film off after the kitten was killed. I keep wishing he would come back and tell us about it.

OH man, he's gonna hate my movie "Ryan S~ Kills Two Kittens"

Strangely enough, Django had a passion for cat juggling. HYPOCRITE!

I fucking loved this movie, the audience I saw it with very clearly loathed it. It wasn't really marketed very much here so I guess many people went in based on the posters which did sell it as a proper horror movie, unlike, well this for example... http://markgbyrne.files.wordpress.co...eepsposter.jpg

I accept your opinion, but do not rescind my own. I think we will have to agree to disagree.

See Scratch? It's not so bad.

Man, Greg David got full on shut down. So to sum it up, the movie is great, and people love to argue.

I don't agree with that at all.

To get this thread back on topic, I found Drag Me To Hell amusing but mostly forgettable. It's a minor piece even in the Raimi canon, full of well-crafted jump scares and gross outs but lacking the ferocious drive and coherency of the Evil Dead or Darkman. It flits from one innocuous seat-buzzer gag (timed perfectly with LOUD NOISES so you know when to scream) to another, but nothing really sticks and it never coheres into anything greater than the sum of it's parts. It's fun while it lasts, but it'll be forgotten.

Fascinating insight. Darkman is coherent? I admit I have never watched that movie when not on some substance or other. But I don't think I'll be watching it again.

I kinda thought Raimi's MO was to flit from set piece to set piece with a couple of character beats now and then. (A Simple Plan excluded).

So the UK releases of this film (both the DVD and Blu-Ray) only have the Director's Cut.
Mildly irritating.

Eh, the differences between the two amount to, literally, two or three shots.

The only thing I could think of was a blood spray/stabbing scene, but even there I can't say for sure.

I'd say the Unrated cut kills a few scenes though. It totally takes the humor out of both the nosebleed scene and the kitten death.

Finally saw this last night and really, really regret not seeing it opening night. Without a friendly audience the movie didn't work for me (my idiocy for choosing this film on Thanksgiving weekend with a bunch of non-nerds)

Liked the overall idea but the leads didn't quite close the deal for me...guess I missed The Chin too much in a Raimi horror movie.

Or maybe it's that Raimi did the same thing he did in the Spiderman movies: shoe horned "weighty backstory" (see that? See what I did?) on characters who really can't support it. In the "meet the parents' scene Lohan stops the conversation by revealing that her mother is an alcoholic, which is followed by Justin Long's mom's congratulating her on her openness before revealing that she, too has an alcoholic parent! It was just such a weird, out of place moment in this kind of film that it kind of ruined it for me. I mean, who cares that Ash has a one eyed father who's hooked on Smack? No one, that's why you don't see it in the Evil Dead films!

I get that we are supposed to sympathize the heroine yet be a bit gleeful that she's getting knocked around, but this approach didn't work. The Evil Dead films work because they start from the premise that the characters are generic Horror Film Characters, and thus it's fun to see them get decimated. They are stripped down, pedal to the medal horror/comedy fests. Drag me to Hell could have benefited from that approach.

I can see your point, but being a clearly EC-inspired horror-fable, those added character beats didn't hurt the proceedings IMO.

I never really had a problem with the dinner scene because it has a ironic sting to it. One of the reasons that Christine wanted that job promotion at the bank was to impress Clay's parents and prove she was worthy of being with him. The promotion, just like her losing weight and getting rid of her Southern accent, is just another example of Christine trying to escape her past. When Clay's mom briefly bonds with her over their mutual childhood experiences, you realize that Christine didn't need to chase after the job at the bank to impress Clay's folks. So, Christine denying Ganush's loan extension was all for nothing.

Yes, eyeballs in cakes will do that to a girl.

So, finally saw this movie on DVD, and I regret not seeing it in the theater with a receptive audience. Maybe the local art theater'll put it into midnight movie rotation.

I loved how it balanced funny with scary, where most recent horror-comedies tend to err more on the side of comedy. I loved how there was a jump scare followed by mouth-fisting followed by ANVIL VIOLENCE, all in one scene.

I think there's more to it than that. A friend of mine pointed out that Christine may be being condemned by the film for abandoning her mom. Clay's mother is zeroing in on this as a character flaw of Christine's. Clay tries to offer a simple but inadequate excuse "She's grieving over her husband, and she wants to be alone", but it's Christine who offers the Alcoholic excuse. The fact that it works in creating a bond with Clay's mother is a pleasant side effect, but the fact is that Christine blamed someone else (her own mom) for what may be her own neglectfulness (alcoholic or not, she maybe ought to stay in touch).

Anyway, shortly after this blaming of her mother, and outing her as an alcoholic (shaming her own mother, like she did Ganush?) the demon attacks. Just as it did after she crumpled up her Pork Queen picture of herself as a fat young farmgirl.

It took a while for me to buy into this version, because Christine is played so nice that it just felt natural to believe in her mom as a horrible person who could not be lived with. But I think I buy into it now.

Just watched this again. I never thought Allison Lohman would make a great lead in a Sam Raimi movie, but I think she is absolutely perfect in this, and admirably gets the shit kicked out of her the way a good Raimi lead should.

I think I love this movie (although the anvil/eyeball scene could make the current bad CGI list)

I thought the anvil scene was great. All the quick cuts were right out of Evil Dead, and the anvil was vintage looney tunes. The scene was fun and disgusting at the same time.

Don't get me wrong, I think everything leading up to the eyeball splatter was vintage Raimi, the effect just looked off to me. Although artificiality might be what Raimi was going for since it's revealed to be in Christine's head.

I think the effect was rushed. When he screened the workprint at last year's SXSW, he mentioned putting back in a few shots that he didn't think would make a PG-13 cut; the eyeball popping might be what he was talking about. Either way, as bad as it is, it's miles better from the near-vector paths we saw two months before the actual release. It looked like TRON was squished out of Mrs. Ganush's skull.

I only just saw this yesterday- gimme a break, I'm slow and have an 8 month old- and I don't know if anyone else has brought it up yet, and as I continue to read, if I see someone else bring it up, I'll make the appropriate edits so I don't sound like I think I'm special- but when they showed Ganesh eating the candy at Christines' desk, there was a moment when the candy was in her mouth and she looked like it was the absolute most delicious thing in the world- that made me think that it's not entitlement causing her to ask for yet another extension, but just typical old-people poorness. (Is that a word? it is now.) And I thought showing her dentures being in such shit shape and her thieving the rest of the candy were there to emphasise her being on hard times.

I thought it looked really fake too. Like, distractingly fake, to where for half a second I wondered what I was looking at.

I still love the movie.

Could be similar to the "anything but red" fluid loophole in EVIL DEAD 2.

As long as it's obviously cartoony CG, they wouldn't get an R rating maybe?

Hmmm???... It is all just pretend.... "No animals were harmed...etc."

Then again I almost walked out of Aliens 3 when I learned Hicks was dead at the beginning so I guess I am dumb too... (or was it Hudson?)

It was Hudson.

Actually, it was Hicks.

Have this movie playing. So damned good. And it actually brings me back to a criticism I have about a lot of big movies (like HP7) being too timid to really milk a big sequence the way and Raimi and Jackson allow themselves to. Interesting that they started their careers with over-the-top horror in very similar ways.

This film's big moments are BIG.