Drag Me To Hell review
Sam Raimi’s incredibly daft Drag Me To Hell has a deliberate old-school horror feel to it. But where you might forgive those old-school films for being daft as low-budget, ramshackle affairs thrown together by over-enthusiastic kids (as Raimi’s cult Evil Dead essentially was), it’s hard to be as forgiving here, with such polished production. And CGI doesn’t fly through the air quite as well as offal and corn syrup.
But are the filmmakers serious or are they taking the piss? Clearly a bit of both, but the boundaries of comedy (possessed handkerchiefs? Talking goats?) and scares (by numbers: OK… it’s quiet now… BAM! BOO! OOGA-freakin’-BOOGA!) is too blurred and there are more laughs to be had than screams.
There’s a modicum of attention paid to the script, however shallow it may be, and production is tight and snappy, but subtlety becomes the main victim as forthcoming plot developments are taped to a sledgehammer and smashed in the viewer’s face. It’s mindless fun that holds together well but it’s not very original, is extremely predictable, and, really, about as scary as a kitten in a bee costume.
28th May 2009 | Comment
Synecdoche, New York review
Synecdoche, NY does not easily sink in. This review comes after a second viewing and I’m still not sure what I really think of it.
Charlie Kaufmann is a remarkable screenwriter with an amazing aptitude for almost unimaginable originality. But although Kaufman’s familiar blurred-reality concepts are as fresh, deep, and amusing as ever, the pieces don’t fit together in his directorial debut as coherently as they do in his brilliant collaborations with directors Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich and Adaptation) and Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in particular).
Kaufman has done a better job at directing than Gondry has at writing (with The Science of Sleep and Be Kind Rewind), but with a script as complex as Synecdoche, a more satisfying end result might have been achieved if it was placed in the hands of a more experienced, focused director from the outset.
It’s good, it’s worth seeing, and it’s worth seeing again, but it’s not the classic one might have hoped it would be. It is a film about frustration and confusion, but it’s also frustrating and confusing. Or frustrated and confused. Or both.
22nd May 2009 | 2 Comments
