VAULTCAST: Conversations in the Dark... w/Brad McHargue

Seems like everyone loves to point out which horror films are "overrated". Hell, I just made my own list of them last month. It's one thing to point out certain movies that a lot of people can agree get more credit than they deserve, but what about those films that everyone just seems to love but you? Brad McHargue, writer for HorrorSquad and author of the blog I Love Horror, is used to this problem, as his opinions are often far from the majority. Good thing he's not afraid to piss people off.

Which is also why he makes a great guest. This week on Conversations in the Dark, he joins me to talk about movies like Drag Me to Hell and Grace, which many people adored, but Brad thought were dogcrap. Plus, I get into my own continued disdain for the beloved Blair Witch Project, and we both scratch our heads at those who call Paranormal Activity overrated.

It's a whole lot of angst and perplexedness this week in the Vaultcast, so listen in below! Or proceed to the Vaultcast home page and download the sucker...

Conversations in the Dark: Brad McHargue

The Vaultcast!

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In other news, when you have a chance, release your inner Kraken by heading over to Bloody-Disgusting.com to check out my latest list: The 21 Most Kick-Ass Giant Monsters in Movie History, in honor of the impending Clash of the Titans remake...

Hump-Day Harangue: Where Have All the Horror Movies Gone?

Right out of the gate, I want to reiterate once again what a grand slam Sam Raimi hit with last month's Drag Me to Hell. So great to see an original, awesome, kick-ass American horror film again, especially representing during the summer blockbuster season. However, it has been pointed out to me by the insightful Scott Weinberg of HorrorSquad that other than that, this has been one piss-poor year for horror.

And you know what? I can't disagree. In fact, looking back at the half-expired 2009, I am appalled at the pitifully slim collection of fright flicks that have made it into theaters thus far. I mean, prior to Drag Me to Hell, the last horror movie to be released theatrically in the U.S. was The Haunting in Connecticut, and that was all the way back in March!

Not to mention the fact that of the scant films that have been released this year, so very few of them have been worth our hard-earned dollars. The Unborn? The Uninvited? The Friday the 13th remake? What's going on here? Aside from the remakes of Last House on the Left and My Bloody Valentine at the beginning of the year, 2009 has been nothing to write home about whatsoever.

Since the release of Drag Me to Hell, we've only gotten Dead Snow just now released on American shores--if you can count a two-screen distribution as a legitimate release. And although I haven't seen it yet, I'm not getting overly enthusiastic from the feedback I've been hearing on that one. Next week we've got Blood: The Last Vampire, which is a pretty decent fun flick for which you'll be seeing a full review from me in the next few days.

And looking on the bright side, we've got the likes of Grace, Antichrist and Zombieland on the horizon for the second half of the year, so maybe there's a chance that 2009 can be pulled out of the crapper. But even disregarding quality, its the sheer lack of quantity in theatrical horror films that's surprising me. What gives here? Are filmmakers, studios and distributors losing interest in the genre en masse--after a near decade-long horror boom, is the scream machine at last grinding to a slow and painful halt?

I certainly hope not. Maybe this year is just a sad abberation. I'm just hoping we're not heading into a down period, a la the 1990s, a decade so bad I actually think that Return of the Living Dead III was a major highlight (seriously). Fingers crossed, people. Mr. Raimi, thanks for saving us. Now someone, anyone, please take the torch and run with it...

DRAG ME TO HELL

Written by Ivan Raimi and Sam Raimi
Directed by Sam Raimi
Starring Alison Lohman, Justin Long and Lorna Raver


I just recently left a job at a bank and after seeing DRAG ME TO HELL, I sure am glad I did. This lovely, young woman, Christine Brown (Alison Lohman), tries so hard. She goes to work every day and does her best to impress her boss so she can get that promotion. She bakes family cake recipes from scratch to bring with her when she meets her boyfriend’s parents for the first time. She’s just trying to carve out a little spot for herself in the world. And then one day, in order to show her boss that she can make the hard decisions necessary in these trying economic times, she refuses to give an ill, elderly lady a third extension on her mortgage payments. Christine chooses personal career growth over human compassion and subsequently, Christine must go straight to hell.


The elderly lady is a Mrs. Ganush (Lorna Raver, who is absolutely repulsive and terrifying at all times). She comes from gypsies and she will have none of this behaviour. She knows that Christine could have done right by her had she really wanted to and so decides that Christine no longer deserves to live. In a turn that isn’t nearly taken as often as it should these days, Mrs. Ganush places a curse on Christine. The curse, as it is explained to Christine by a psychic she stumbles upon named Rham Jas (Dileep Rao), will find her tormented by a demon called the Lamia for three days. After these three days, the Lamia will return to take her soul to hell. It seems to me that Christine’s life already resembled hell but I guess it can always be worse. (You would be agreeing with me too if you saw what it was like for Christine to have Justin Long for a boyfriend – what a boring sap he is).


It sounds as though I’m poking fun but that’s only because DRAG ME TO HELL is a lot of unexpected fun. Raimi doesn’t cheap out on jump out of your seat scares that are usually accompanied by involuntary screeches but he does so a knowing admiration for classical horror conventions. Raimi may have been swinging along for years in the SPIDER-MAN franchise but he goes back to his roots with this one. He plays with sounds that are so intensely jarring, they would scare the deaf. He plays with shadows because he knows that what we cannot see is so much more frightening than what we can. Raimi plays, period. He knows, as well as his brother, Ivan, who co-wrote the screenplay, that scaring people is supposed to be fun. How else can one explain how something as simple as a handkerchief can become one of the most menacing devices I have ever seen? DRAG ME TO HELL is disgusting to watch and will gross you out but you’ll delight in every fright and desperately want the next to come. I don’t recall ever having as much going to hell.



FUN FACT: This was supposed to be Ellen Page's first post-JUNO role but she had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts.

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: Up with UP!

People love to watch other people fail. It is especially more delicious when the one falling is finally doing it after a number of successes. And while the industry people around the world consistently admire and appreciate the Pixar pictures, they are all still waiting to watch them fall on their faces. The logic is that a streak of success ten pictures long is not sustainable but if there is one thing Pixar is good at (and realistically, there are a great number of things they are great at), it is making the impossible happen and proving everyone wrong.

The truth of it is that people may speculate when the first Pixar failure will come but these same people all LOVE the Pixar movies. UP! is no exception to any of this. It is universally adored by critics and audiences alike and now, it has overcome a vague advertising campaign to become Pixar’s biggest opening in years. As far as comparable summer Pixar releases go, UP! and its $68 million take is the biggest Pixar opening since FINDING NEMO pulled in $70 million in 2003. The fish movie went on to make close to $340 million in North America alone. WALL-E and RATATOUILLE both debuted to less ($63 million and $47 million respectively) and went on to make over $200 million each domestically so UP! is certainly off to a bold start. Now we just have to see where the wind carries it over time.


Universal’s attempt to counterprogram against UP! was only moderately successful. Sam Raimi’s return to the horror genre, DRAG ME TO HELL, only brought in about $16 million to narrowly beat out the second week of TERMINATOR SALVATION, which stumbled more than it should have (-62%). DRAG ME TO HELL is actually only slightly less praised than UP! is but audiences did not buy into the high concept approach to horror. That old lady in the movie couldn’t afford her mortgage payments and people couldn’t afford to pay to watch her not afford those payments. Or maybe they were just more interested in seeing the second frame of NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM: BATTLE OF THE SMITHSONIAN. The Ben Stiller McMovie dropped off a reasonable 52% considering it had intense competition from UP!.


Both EASY VIRTUE and THE BROTHERS BLOOM continued successful expansions this week. THE BROTHERS BLOOM nearly cracked the Top 10, coming in just behind OBSESSED with $652K on 148 screens. Perhaps by the time final figures come in tomorrow, it will have surpassed the Beyonce thriller. Though Black Sheep doesn’t believe Jessica Biel’s turn in EASY VIRTUE is that special, audiences are eating it up. The British farce added just 16 screens to its roster and saw its returns increase by nearly 70%. And although it has the third highest per screen average of any film playing, this year’s winner Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language film, DEPARTURES, did not do the kind of business befitted to an Academy Award winning film. $72K on 9 screens is respectable but hardly memorable. An earlier release would have helped significantly.


NEXT WEEK: Laugh it up, folks. Will Ferrell goes head to head with his former OLD SCHOOL director next week as LAND OF THE LOST (3300 screens) opens against the much buzzed about, THE HANGOVER (3200 screens). Oh, and if you’re a woman and want to laugh, well then you’ll be happy to hear that Nia Vardalos is back in theatres with MY LIFE IN RUINS (1100 screens). Or maybe laughing at people is much more your style. Mariah Carey returns to theatres in TENNESSEE (14 screens); she plays a waitress who wants to sing. It’s a big stretch. And finally, if you like your laughter with a little heart, Sam Mendes goes indie with AWAY WE GO. That’s where I’ll be.

Source: Box Office Mojo

Drag Me to Hell Took Me to Heaven

Thank you Sam Raimi, for saving us from sequels, remakes and adolescent garbage. Welcome back, sir. Hail to the king, baby.

In an age when so much unimaginative crap is being pumped out there for horror fans to deal with, Mr. Raimi has returned to the horror genre for the first time since the Evil Dead trilogy, and given us a truly fresh, original piece of horror cinema that is bound to become one of the all-time favorites of a great many fans--including this one.


Many reviewers are hesitant to come off so enthusiastically, but I'm going to simply come out and state that I have nothing negative whatsoever to say about Raimi's Drag Me to Hell. It is a rollicking, non-stop rollercoaster of terrifying fun from beginning to end, and I plan on revisiting it often. I have not thoroughly enjoyed the hell out of a horror flick this much in a long time. The unabashedly geeky glee that this film has inspired in me is truly formidable.

For one thing, Raimi has proven that provided you hold off on too much blood, you can pretty much get away with anything and still squeak under the PG-13 radar. This movie contains so much that is truly revolting (in a good way) and disturbing that it amazes me the MPAA did not slap it with an R--we're talking vomiting maggots, corpses spewing embalming fluid, rulers shoved down people's throats, eyelids stapled shut, and that's only what I can think of off the top of my head. If you think Raimi's gone soft with the rating, think again my friend.

Alison Lohman is wonderful as the heroine of the film, almost coming across as a more evocative and effective version of Kirsten Dunst's Mary-Jane Watson from Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy. Her signature scene in the graveyard--don't even get me started. Pure, iconic Raimi, and the girl pulls it off beautifully.

If I could compare this flick to anything Raimi's done in the past, I'd say it most resembled Evil Dead II, meshing gut-wrenching horror and genuinely funny gallows humor in equal measure. I'll be honest--I didn't expect this to be as much of a comedy as it was, but I was very pleasantly surprised. Because as with all the great horror comedies, it is as frightening as it is funny. Much of the splatstick is pure Evil Dead, and there is a seance scene in particular which will have fans of Raimi's classic horror trilogy squealing with glee. Talk about throwing a bone to the diehard fans! Fantastic.

Much of Raimi's signature camera work and splatstick sensibility is in full effect, if a bit more polished than in his earlier work. Also, the strings-driven score of the picture will give fans Evil Dead flashbacks as well. But make no mistake--this is no slavish nostalgia piece. Drag Me to Hell is a voraciously original and inventive piece of filmmaking, which can be enjoyed even by those who wouldn't know their Ash from their elbow.

The sense of horror-driven fun that pervades this film is infectious. This is the kind of film-going experience we fans long to achieve, but so rarely ever seem to. Raimi hits joyously on every brand of terror--the easy jump scares, the deep genuine dread, and of course, the gratuitous gross-outs. It's all here in a veritable cornucopia of shocker goodness.

My friends, Drag Me to Hell embodies what makes being a fan of horror cinema such a joy. See it immediately, and often.

And for a completely different yet equally enthusiastic look at Raimi's latest, proceed directly to Day of the Woman, forthwith!

Raimi, You Sly Devil...

The House on Haunted Hill (1959) . . . Drag Me to Hell (2009)

Nicely done, sir. Nicely done.

Juno Goes to Hell

Horror fans know her best as the screen's most twisted "Little Red Riding Hood" in 2005's Hard Candy, and now the Oscar-nominated Ellen Page will be returning to the genre along with a director doing the very same thing.
Variety has reported that Page, recently nominated for her star-making performance in the indy sleeper hit Juno, will be starring in Sam Raimi's Drag Me to Hell, playing the part of a young woman afflicted with a supernatural curse. This is Raimi's first horror pic since Army of Darkness (1992), the last installment in the Evil Dead trilogy. Page also played Kitty Pryde in X-Men: The Last Stand.
Filming on the new project, to be produced by Raimi's Ghost House Pictures, will begin next month.

Raimi Returns to His Roots

After helming three mega-huge Spider-Man movies in a row, Sam Raimi will officially be going back to the genre that first put him on the map. That's right, Variety reported yesterday that Mr. Raimi's next project will be a low-budget flick called Drag Me to Hell (IMdb still lists Jeffrey Lynch as the director), to be financed via his Ghost House production company.
Sam and his brother Ivan penned the screenplay shortly after collaborating on 1993's Army of Darkness, the last of the famed Evil Dead trilogy that made Raimi a god to horror fans. Drag Me to Hell is reported to be a "morality tale about the unwitting recipient of a supernatural curse."
Raimi has produced several horror films in recent years through Ghost House, including The Grudge, Boogeyman, The Messengers and 30 Days of Night. Ghost House will also be producing a remake of Raimi's seminal 1981 masterpiece, The Evil Dead.