Now…THAT’S the way to go!!!

Just last week, I got to finish viewing the oh-so-obviously-titled “Bruce Campbell vs. Army of Darkness: The Director’s Cut”. Apparently enough, that installment has Bruce’s “boomstick”-wieldin’ hero Ash literally exiled to the Middle Ages thanks to that cursed book The Necronomicon. He finds himself the reluctant hero and saviour of a village being threatened by a skeletal zombie army straight out of Ray Harryhausen’s workshop.

Apparently so, Sam Raimi’s latest film  – and his return into the horror field after winning the hearts of critics and audiences (rabid fanbois and otherwise) worldwide with the Spider-Man trilogy – comes into our shores a week after opening in the US to generally rave reviews  (at last count, 93% in Rotten Tomatoes).  Even as it is rated PG-13 Stateside, it is likewise rated R-13 over here with relatively minor alterations…which puzzles me since it doesn’t relish in the gratuitous bloodthirstiness or over-the-top T&A of recent horror excursions.

Yes, it is an original story from director Sam & his brother/writing partner Ivan; now that’s refreshing in an age which has seen ripping off Asian titles and the mercifully-short-lived “torture-porn” craze being replaced by strip-mining ’80s classics, with reimaginings of the Betamax-era icons like Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger up the pipeline.   Sad to say, that trend has made much of recent Hollywood horror look so po-faced silly;  so Team Raimi here gives us Drag Me To Hell.

For the record, I’m not a horror fan (at least most of what passes for that post-Saw) but I do have a soft spot for horror films that never forget to inject humour to leaven out the atmosphere without using dead bodies for cheap gags.

Alison Lohman (looking a lot like Anna Paquin circa True Blood, albeit without the Suthhun acsint) is Christine Brown, an Iowa farm girl made good in sunny California as a bank loan officer.  Like many in her position, she lusts after the assistant manager’s chair, not so much for her own career satisfaction but also to please the richie-rich parents of her shrink boyfriend, Clay (Justin Long); she faces opposition in the form of Stan Rubin (Reggie Lee) whose compulsive brown-nosing and expertise with numbers makes him the manager’s choice to fill that seat.

One day, an old woman comes and requests for a loan; Christine denies, then the gran goes totally bat-shit on the bank floor, prompting her to call security.  After her shift, as Christine is about to drive herself home, the old woman – Mrs. Ganush, a Romani true and true – viciously attacks her, snatching one of her coat buttons and uttering a curse on it, which promises on the third day to…well, you know why the film is so titled.

UK trailer

The next three days may as well seem to be the longest for Christine as she runs to her boyfriend for help;  a tension-relieving date brings them to a spiritualist, while a “Meet the Parents” scenario nearly becomes a recipe for relationship disaster no thanks to the actions of an ordinary housefly.   All along the way, Clay displays a remarkable amount of fortitude and resolve which would have sent lesser men scampering out the door.  Christine, on the other hand, practically morphs into the female version of Bruce Campbell’s Ash character from the Evil Dead trilogy, with the abovementioned cursed button becoming the new Necronomicon along the process (interestingly, Christine was supposed to be played by Juno star Ellen Page, who doesn’t come off too convincing as a loan arranger, though)

True enough, there are a number of sly winks to Raimi’s Evil Dead trilogy, particularly in Mrs. G’s choice of wheels; that should more than compensate for the seeming absence of his usual repertory players such as Campbell and J. K. Simmons.   In keeping to the PG-13 rating, Raimi makes use of proper comic timing and a whole lot of tongue-in-cheek to punctuate the scares; Christine’s encounters with the old gypsy (and her handkerchief) recall Ash’s Three Stooges-inspired war with the mini-Ashes from Army of Darkness.

Can’t find the scene with the mini-Ashes, but this really bony scene should be equally up the alley

It has yet to be seen if Drag Me To Hell may prompt me to dig out the scary treats from my Betamax’d youth,  but this sure got this certified horror-averse moviegoer (who has sworn not to see any of the Saw movies or its derivatives/rip-offs over my dead body) squirming on his cinema seat.

Looks like Shaun of the Dead is bound to have some company in my DVD rack eventually…

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