Drag Me to Hell ~ review

Two words to describe this movie: Classic horror.

Drag Me to Hell is the movie which marked the return of Sam Raimi to the horror genre. As you guys may have known, Sam Raimi directed The Evil Dead series before he directed the ever-so-popular Spiderman trilogy.

Drag Me to Hell tells a story of a loan officer, Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) who had been cursed by a gypsy woman, Sylvia Ganush (Lorna Raver) after she refused to extend her (the gypsy woman) mortgage. It may sound like a simple premise for a movie but trust me, it's not a smooth ride. A lot of chaos, loud sound-effects, jump-off-your-seat moments, and of course, funny moments too (if you watched the Evil Dead series, then you know what I mean).

Acting wise, I was most impressed with Lorna Raver performance in the movie, she made old woman looks very scary and life-threatening to others. This just proves that you don't mess with old women. Alison Lohman's acting was also good as the cursed loan officer. Well, she has to be good because she appears in almost all scenes in the movie. Her portrayal as a naive, struggling and frustrated career woman was almost perfect for me, the audience could even relate to her and her struggles. The other supporting casts such as Justin Long (as Christine's boyfriend, Clay Dalton) and Dileep Rao (as the fortune teller, Rham Jas) sums up a great group of casts. In fact, I love the final scene when Clay Dalton and Christine Brown were at the railway station to go for a holiday trip to Santa Barbara. I think Justin Long was perfect in that scene, love it!

Talking about scenes, I think the final scene was really superb! Although story wise it was quite predictable but the execution was really good. Other great scenes were the loud-and-scary opening scenes and the I'm-getting-my-revenge graveyard scenes. Both are really good and fun to watch, and also my personal favourite scenes from the movie (together with the final scenes at the railway station). But there are a few scenes that I feel were unnecessary but since this movie is from a guy who made Evil Dead, then I guess anything goes. Another thing that bothers me is that everything in this movie wanted to go into Christine's mouth, that include a hankerchief, a fly, and anything that came out from the gypsy woman mouth (eeu!). Weird.

One thing for sure, Drag Me to Hell is a fun horror movie. Very frightening, hilarious, and entertaining. If you like horror movie, then this is a must-see. It was already released in the US for quite some time but had just recently been released in certain Asian countries (11 June 2009 in Malaysia).

By the way, do you ever wonder why this movie was named Drag Me to Hell? It's not a metaphore. The cursed person will be dragged to hell... literally.

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Scary.