Monday. Drag me to Hell.

Okay, so there are lots of things to address today but I don't have a lot of time so I'll get this out of the way.

Sam Raimi and his brother put together a new horror movie called Drag Me To Hell that was supposed to be a lifeline for scary-film lovers who are tired of the squick and the torture porn and who are hungry for some real, gut-wrenching terror. What they delivered was... only mostly what we were hoping for.

I admit the fundamentals are there with this one. But the ultimate followthrough kinda leaves me wondering if the original script didn't get focusgrouped to death before they started shooting. There is, sadly, a lot of squick. Lots of what my beloved and I now refer to as "ghost-grease", and horrible things going into, or coming out of (or coming out of and then going in to) people's mouths. Sure, no breasty teens get torn limb-from-limb, but most of the ghost-grease scenes really did leave me gagging violently as I covered my eyes not from terror, but from a strict desire to not throw up in a movie theater.

There's also a plot ... erm... twist I guess that I object most violently to. It involves the murder of ... erm... one of the characters... and the later re-gurgitation of same. Come on. I call B.S. All I can say about it is just big fat No. That's never okay, not even in a scary movie. Don't film it. Don't suggest it. Don't encourage it. Don't glorify it and for the gods' sakes... just don't do it. That was a heartless and tasteless and wretched thing to do and frankly the Raimi brothers have a LOT of apologizing to do.

Everything that happens in the movie from that point on... well let's just say that little plot twist blew all my freakin' sympathy right out of the room. Everyone got what they deserved after that. No pity from me. No siree.

We were lucky enough to see the film (which I have to admit I did enjoy, even above and beyond the ghost grease and stuff) in a theater just brimming with hecklers.

I don't want to see EVERY movie in that kind of environment... but every now and then, it's a real kick in the pants to sit there and just not take it all so seriously.

For instance, the guy next to us shouted (at the right time) "No! Don't eat the cursed fly!", and then not too much later, he said "See? That's why I don't eat cursed flies!"

We laughed a lot. Drag me to hell had a lot of potential and I can see where they were going. It still had too much gack in it, though, so it only gets a B from me. Needs better adherence to rules and less sputum/barf/mouthsfullofworms etc. Fun though. Do go see it - totally. The Raimi's are so close to setting up a great lineage of scary films. We MUST encourage them to do more work and help drown out the torture-porn-ists out there who think horror is naught but bloody meat hooks and pink underpants.