Drag Me to Hell (2009)
Drag Me to Hell (2009) — Hmmm, I wonder if the two identical envelopes will get mixed up at some point… Alfred Hitchcock believed that suspense existed when the viewer knows something the characters in the movie don’t know. Now maybe that’s true (certainly worked for Hitch) but I think it becomes somewhat nullified when you can see plot “twists” coming a mile away. But that would be totally forgivable if this movie was the least bit frightening. I’m not even talking about a legitimately scary movie like The Shining, but at least a movie with a few good jumps. At least on par with your average Black Christmas rip-off slasher movie (most people say Halloween rip-off but Black Christmas came first dammit!). There’s a lot of gross stuff. I guess for some people gross is scary. A cadaver vomiting embalming fluid into someone’s mouth is most definitely unpleasant to think about or watch, but that’s not really scary. Many many years ago Sam Raimi made a legit horror flick: The Evil Dead. It is unspeakably awesome. He made two sequels, both of which took a more comedic bent. They too were awesome and a lot of people like them better (I still prefer number 1). But all three of those movies had a clear idea of what kind of tone they wanted to have. This movie seems to want to be taken seriously but the big “scare” moments are almost funny. Silly even. After the debacle that was Spider-Man 3, I’m wondering if Raimi is slipping as a director… SIDENOTE: While Allison Lohman uses a prominently product-placed Mottorola cell phone, Justin “the Mac dude” Long uses an iPhone… I wonder if that’s in his Apple contract?
Persistence of Vision 