DRAG ME TO HELL - Blu-ray review

Sam Raimi made a name for himself alongside his childhood friend Bruce Campbell while creating the low budget horror film "The Evil Dead." The director would go on to make two more films in the series and the third "Army of Darkness" was created with a large budget via Universal Studios. That film was not the success that anybody had hoped for and while Raimi had written the story for "Drag Me to Hell," he moved onto other endeavors such as "The Quick and the Dead" and "For Love of the Game." Then, the relatively unknown director struck gold when he was hired to helm the "Spider-Man" series and the rest is history. Between the third and fourth films of the webslinger's franchise Raimi finally returned to horror and put his script to film.

Alison Lohman is perhaps best known for her role as Nicolas Cage's daughter in "Matchstick Men" and Justin Long has become synonymous with Apple while starring in the long-running series of advertisements for the Mac computer alongside John Hodgman. They are the stars of "Drag Me to Hell" and without a cameo by Bruce Campbell, the film's only true familiar faces are those of supporting actors David Paymer and Chelcie Ross. Raimi relies on storytelling, effects and direction to power "Drag Me to Hell" through its hour and a half running length. The film has received mostly positive reviews and without any discerning A-Listers beyond the director, "Drag Me to Hell" shows Raimi's strength as a director to need only his own talents to create a successful experience.

"Drag Me to Hell" has Lohman portraying the film's star Christine Brown. She is a young woman who was raised on a farm and works hard at a bank run by Jim Jacks (Paymer). Christine is hoping for a promotion to an assistant manager position and finds herself in competition with the newly hired but aggressive Stu Rubin (Reggie Lee). She has the love and support of her boyfriend Clay Dalton (Long) and has been dating the professor for a year. Unfortunately, Clay's parents Leonard (Ross) and Trudy (Molly Cheek) do not necessarily approve of their son dating a simple farm girl and Christine's own insecurities between her job, her physique and her relationship cause the girl great stress. She has been successful, but struggles to keep everything together.

One day an old lady driving Sam Raimi's yellow 1973 Oldsmobile Delta 88 arrives at the bank. Mrs. Sylvia Ganush (Lorna Raver) is being evicted from her house after failing to keep up with mortgage and after two previous loan extensions, Christine is forced to make the decision to help the old lady out with her loan and forfeit the promotion or turn down Mrs. Ganush and make the bank some money to put her at the top of the list over Stu for the position. She decides she needs to make the tough decision and puts her career over her personal feelings and the sickly lady with gross dentures and a diseased eye attacks Christine. She is stopped by security, but attacks her in the parking garage later that evening and removes a button from Christine's coat.

The button becomes a cursed object and Christine is soon haunted by a gypsy demon known as Lamia. A psychic named Shaun San Dena (Adriana Barraza) explains that this dark goat demon will torment Christine for three days while she is in possession as the owner of the cursed object and tries to help her appease the evil spirit in hopes of saving the girl from having Lamia take her soul with him to Hell. The story moves along as Christine nears the point of death and a failed séance and very predictable moment between Christine and the corpse of Ganush bring the film to a near close in an ending that roughly ended as I had expected for most of the film.

The easy to guess ending is my only major complaint against the film, but it is not quite enough to me to dislike the film as a whole. I found "Drag Me to Hell" to be an affable and nicely done horror film that shows Raimi understands what is needed to create an original and engaging frightful experience although the director has created a picture that is nowhere near horrifying and pays more tribute to "The Evil Dead's" more entertaining and comical moments and the gore effects of the earlier films than it does to straight horror. The film moves along nicely and while the Lamia is hardly a top notch Hollywood monster, it allows for an effective mythology that doesn't rely on heavy make-up or overly expensive special effects to create evil. Shadows and moving objects are the delivers of terror and a pink handkerchief is used as one of the film's scarier objects.

While the film lacks starpower and Campbell not appearing the film just doesn't seem right, young Alison Lohman and Justin "Mac" Long do a fine job of carrying the lead roles in the Raimi film. Lohman has the lungs and ability to show terror effectively and while she isn't going to rival the legendary scream queens of Hollywood, she portrays a farm-girl turned insecure city girl rather nicely. She is perky and attractive and can match her looks with an ability to act. Long has become a cultural icon for hipness with his portrayal of the overly hip "Mac" in the "Get a Mac" ad campaign against the overly nerdy "PC" of John Hodgman. At 31 years old, it seems a stretch to imagine him as a college professor, but he plays the part of the well-to-do, but caring boyfriend with conviction. Raimi's decision to go with these actors over bigger names was the right decision.

Raimi's return to horror is something I accept with open arms, but after watching "Drag Me to Hell," I'm not so sure that Raimi's magic works with larger budgets. "Army of Darkness" had a campy and cheesy quality to it that salvaged the film's flaws from burying it permanently as the film has become a solid selling catalog title. While most of the problems with "Army of Darkness" are not repeated with "Drag Me to Hell," it is clear that Raimi pines to replicate his gross-out and over the top moments with a large budget, but profuse amounts of blood vomiting just doesn't seem special when done properly with a large budget. What made the first two "Evil Dead" films so special and what worked in the early Peter Jackson films was the low budget nature of the effects. "Drag Me to Hell" is too pretty and too polished to pull off the Raimi magic, but the film is still a solid entry in the horror genre.

Video:

The 2.40:1 widescreen "Drag Me to Hell" is a slickly crafted film where director Sam Raimi seems intent on using the budget allotted after his success with the "Spider-Man" films to make a visually impressive horror film and the director varies between busy sets full of action to the frightfully empty parking garage that scares many in their daily lives. From an early helicopter shot showing traffic gridlock to the effects heavy climax, "Drag Me to Hell" is an impressive looking film that is bolstered by a very strong digital high definition transfer. The image is clean and colorful. When the lovely Christine suffers the world's worst nosebleed, the blood is rich and deep in color. The flames of Hell show how nicely the detailed transfer handles warm hues and the cold decrepit looking Mrs. Ganush shows the drab cold hues off nicely. The transfer is clean and shows off miniscule details as "Drag Me to Hell" looks better than any "Evil Dead" film ever did.

Audio:

One of my earlier thoughts while watching "Drag Me to Hell" was that the score by Christopher Young seemed too good to be part of a horror film and Raimi must have enjoyed having a full orchestra performs his score compared to the limited music provided for "The Evil Dead." The music is not the only strength of "Drag Me to Hell" as the English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio mix is engaging and cleanly crafted. Lamia arrives during his first three days as a specter in the wind and the swirling sound effects fill every channel cleanly and create an enveloping experience that is amplified as things can be heard crashing in every channel. There is a lot going on in the sound mix for "Drag Me to Hell" and Raimi has always and continues to use sound as an extra character in his films. A Dolby Digital 2.0 surround mix as well as foreign language support of Spanish and French DTS 5.1 is included. English SDH, French and Spanish subtitles.

Extras:

I must admit that I'm a bit surprised that Universal and Sam Raimi didn't put a little more effort into the video release of "Drag Me to Hell." The Blu-ray release features both the Unrated Director's Cut (1:38:51) of the film and the Theatrical Version (1:39:05). The major differences are different cuts and angles of the cat murder scene, blood is also vomited during the nosebleed scene and the fight between Christine and Mrs. Ganush is far more violent. I enjoy that both versions have been included on the Blu-ray release. The disc begins with advertisements for the films "Inglourious Basterds" and a Blu-ray promotional clip. While watching the menus a Ticker is visible in the upper right corner and is fed information from the Internet connection. This may be turned on or off. A second included DVD contains a Digital Copy of Drag Me to Hell Unrated that can be used on PC or Mac based systems and associated portable devices.

The remaining menu supplied supplements are sparse, but they do use modern Profile 2.0 technology. Aside from My Scenes and D-Box Motion Code Access to the BD-Live Center is provided under the "What's New" menu option. This I will assume contains simple advertisement clips as most titles using the "What's New" menu option typically provide. The only bon-a-fide supplement beyond the two versions of the film is the fourteen Production Video Diaries (35:08). Justin Long provides the intro and some good behind-the-scenes footage is included throughout these relatively short diary entries. While they aren't as impressive as the "King Kong" diaries from Peter Jackson, these provide a good look at the making of Raimi's film. Some of the entries are based upon the filming of a certain scene, while others are general looks at the overall process of filmmaking such as makeup and effects.

Closing:

"Drag Me to Hell" is a nice little horror film that was budgeted at thirty million dollars. When compared to Raimi's early cult film "The Evil Dead," this is a massive budget. "Drag Me to Hell" marks Raimi's return to the horror genre and watching the film you can see many of the elements that has made the "Evil Dead" trilogy such a beloved set of films and helped launch Raimi onto the A-List of Hollywood directors. The film has its flaws, but it isn't meant to be a large and grand horror production. As the classic Universal bumpers suggest, this is homage to the old days and it works well as such. The Blu-ray release features very good sight and sound, but the supplemental materials were disappointing as I had expected Raimi to embrace the technology offered by the format, but he really does not. Fans of the "Evil Dead" films and Raimi should love this picture and for most others it should be a fun little spooky film, even if it isn't frightening and has its share of flaws.