"Hell" girl

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• Tony Dayoub says:

  May 28, 2009 at 9:26 pm

  Glenn, I por­ted over my com­ments I made over at the Auteurs to gen­er­ate some dis­cus­sion at your site:
  Though I thought the film had one hum­dinger of a finale, I felt like I had to ser­i­ously adjust to the Raimi aes­thet­ic to get into this movie. I was sur­prised because I am a fan of his since the Evil Dead days. But some­thing about the movie made it feel like a throw­back, and not in a good way.
  Reading oth­er reviews like yours, I def­in­itely seem to be in the minor­ity. In a weird way, I’m dis­ap­poin­ted with myself for not lik­ing it. Especially after prais­ing Terminator Salvation so heartily

• Dave McDougall says:

  May 28, 2009 at 10:02 pm

  hav­ing not seen it, are these spoil­ers the kind that actu­ally spoil the film? I’d like to read the review if they’re not. I’m fond enough of Ms. Lohman as an act­ress to see this, so if the answer­’s yes I’ll wait to read your thoughts.
  [Funny that I feel oblig­ated to to say “as an act­ress” when com­ment­ing on a woman’s work. A bit sex­ist either way, I guess.]

• Glenn Kenny says:

  May 28, 2009 at 10:12 pm

  @ Dave: I try to be reas­on­ably subtle, but I don’t know that I can accept respons­ib­il­ity for assess­ing wheth­er just what I give away won’t inter­fere with your view­ing pleas­ure. As Lohman show­cases go, “Hell” is a good one—she brings a neces­sary uniron­ic com­mit­ment to the char­ac­ter and still man­ages to have fun with it—so count that as a motiv­a­tion to check out the film first, maybe…

• bill says:

  May 29, 2009 at 7:57 am

  I will see this. It’ll be the first hor­ror film I’ve actu­ally bothered to see in the theat­er in a very long time. Which is strange, because I’m not even big on Raimi’s hor­ror films. I like “Evil Dead II” well enough, but he did­n’t make a film I really con­nec­ted to until “A Simple Plan”.

• giles edwards says:

  May 29, 2009 at 9:00 am

  It *almost* should­n’t work – it’s shame­lessly gen­er­ic any way you look at it. But (and it’s a massive but) it’s very, very smart at set­ting up all the hor­ror tropes we’ve come to know and love and screw with them just a little bit. Or at least make them fresh and enti­cing. And of course, it’s made by someone who has been there since 1981 before most of this brand of fun kicked off. This is Sam Raimi show­ing his real con­trol over the pro­cess of set­ting up a thriller.
  It’s unnerv­ing, though, rather than actu­ally scary and it delights in rev­el­ing in the genre rather than rein­vent­ing it to any great degree. It’s as if Raimi is say­ing to any film­maker who wants to make (or has made) and pic­ture for his Ghosthouse label: “*this* is how you do it, *this* is your bench­mark, now go out there and make some­thing that works as well as this!”
  It’s a very refresh­ing, won­der­fully grot­esque ride. Really quite mean spir­ited too. Which is anoth­er bonus.
  ***MILD SPOILER***
  It’s pretty much “Evil Dead 4” as well – the Seer’s assist­ant doing his best ‘Henrietta’ from “Evil Dead 2” at one point – so per­haps all those requests can stop?
  ***END MILD SPOILER***
  Alison Lohman cer­tainly gets as much abuse as Campbell got, so a great sport. And Justin-Long-as-Ted-Raimi (even though Ted Raimi is actu­ally in it as well) was great.

• Matthias Galvin says:

  May 30, 2009 at 11:45 am

  This has noth­ing to do with the top­ic, but I wanted to say it:
  So I was vis­it­ing my loc­al thrift store yes­ter­day, and I see this STACK of DVDs. Above said stack is a sign that reads “$2 for a movie.” I start look­ing through them: Bug, Dr. T and the Women, etc… And as I’m sift­ing through these semi-weird titles, I real­ized: They’re the run­off from the bank­ruptcy of Lion’s Gate. Anyway, I’m look­ing through it, and I find this one movie, Eulogy. And whose blurb is on it but yours, of course, from your ten­ure at Première. I end up buy­ing only on your recom­mend­a­tion (it’s only $2). But I just wanted you to know, if your words have betrayed me, I might just vis­it New York, and I might just find a “Glenn Kenny”, and I might just come to your door­step, gun drawn, ready to give you the pleas­ure of explain­ing what was so good about the movie.
  …or I might just give it to a friend, I don’t know.

• Glenn Kenny says:

  May 30, 2009 at 12:23 pm

  @MG: I dunno what to tell you. I saw the pic­ture at Sundance, packed house at its biggest theat­er, and every­body, myself included, was laugh­ing his or her ass off. Must have been the alti­tude or some­thing, because since then I’ve only met one oth­er per­son who’d admit to lik­ing the thing. Weird.

• Matthias Galvin says:

  May 31, 2009 at 1:28 pm

  Well Glenn, I gotta tell you… Despite some real drag­ging at times, it actu­ally was sur­pris­ingly funny.
  So if I do vis­it New York, and find a “Glenn Kenny” and come to your door­step… Hopefully, you’ll have time for some drinks.

• Max says:

  May 31, 2009 at 1:48 pm

  Glenn…something about the matter-of-fact and bor­der­line sociopath­ic way he described hold­ing you to gun­point about a review he dis­agreed with makes me think that you should­n’t open your liquor cab­in­et to this guy. Just saying.

• larry aydlette says:

  May 31, 2009 at 6:02 pm

  I’m sure some­body has already made this point, but “Drag Me To Hell,” which I thor­oughly enjoyed, reminds me a lot of a Brian De Palma film. It would make a great double bill with “The Fury.”

• DUH says:

  June 1, 2009 at 4:23 pm

  @Larry Aydlette: Yes, the com­par­is­on with “The Fury” is very apt. Both “The Fury” and “Drag Me To Hell” are enjoy­able genre exer­cises with some nice gonzo flour­ishes that left me feel­ing like they could have been even bet­ter than they actu­ally were. I was a bit wor­ried that the PG-13 could hamper Raimi, but it was nev­er an issue, giv­en the gen­er­al car­toon­ish­ness. Justin Long, on the oth­er hand, I can­’t stand…
  Glenn, I’m curi­ous: you note how well the film estab­lishes Christine’s self-denial and her status as “a former fatty,” as you put, but I gotta say, giv­en how hard the film hit those notes, I did­n’t feel that they added up to much. They felt more a loose thread to me than an integ­ral part of the movie’s weave. Did you feel like this did more than estab­lish gen­er­al sym­pathy for the character?

• Glenn Kenny says:

  June 1, 2009 at 5:19 pm

  @DUH:Not to get too post­mod­ern or any­thing, but I thought they eli­cited the audi­ence’s sym­pathy with the express pur­pose of refus­ing to reward it at the end, which struck me as pretty funny.

• DUH says:

  June 1, 2009 at 6:56 pm

  Glenn: I def­in­itely get that and enjoyed the end­ing (though I wish Justin Long had faced a grue­some end as well). Picking up on the car­toon­ish ele­ments you iden­ti­fied in the movie, though, I thought Christine’s comeup­pance might play *spe­cific­ally* on those estab­lish­ing char­ac­ter details.
  While she might argu­ably be said to absolve her­self of that self-denial by buy­ing her­self a new coat, that did­n’t really play into her end. I almost half-expected a sequence after the cred­its of her in hell, back on the farm and fat, tor­men­ted by demons or some­thing, you know? But maybe that’s a me. After all, I’m also still won­der­ing why an Asian-American char­ac­ter was named Stu Rubin (though I thought that was kind of hilarious).

• Zack Handlen says:

  June 2, 2009 at 8:33 am

  I loved this one right up until the ending–SPOILERS
  Lohman was just so likable in the lead, and the final scene was so dark, that it ruined the fun of the rest of the pic­ture. Made all those repeated bits that Raimi’s hit before (hey look, a Deadite!) a little more obvi­ous, and the plot­ting was just irrit­at­ingly lazy. And I’m still irked by the damn (heh) thing because now I don’t think I’ll be able to enjoy the rest of the movie much at all, know­ing that Raimi just shrugs off the con­clu­sion. The char­ac­ter, and the audi­ence, deserved better.
  /SPOILERS
  Although if we did get a sequel, I’d change my mind real fast…