Last week I left the cinema having seen Drag me to Hell feeling rather empty. After hearing so many good things about this film I though I'd give it my hard earned pounds, hoping for the best. I should probably say from the outset I'm not the biggest fan of horror movies in any guise but if it contains an element of thriller then when the lights go up I'll be satisfied. Drag me to hell lacked a thriller element, I was not amused, it seemed to be a different film to the one the reviews had reigned praise on. From the off it looked like it was going to be a parody/homage to B-movie type trashy horror flicks of the 70s, okay, fair enough I can live with a Tarantinoesque romp. The prologue sequence was promising, a dark foreboding mansion with a jaded spiritualist trying to save the soul of a young boy before he gets sucked into the floor and well as far down as you can be dragged, the tone was set. However from the first cut to our protagonist it all tumbled away. Her doe eyed blank looks to camera, symptomatic of poor acting and poor direction, the by numbers plot, the twist you see coming a mile away, the lack luster script, the popcorn flinging shock moments that felt numb, the criminal underuse of the very talented Justin Long, it all adds up to a feeling of being cheated out of what should have been a good movie.
As I left the cinema I mused on what I'd just seen, is it a problem with the Hollywood system? The studio big wigs invest too much time and money in name directors who are unable to produce good films anymore when they should be investing money, support and marketing muscle in burgeoning talent. Am I just overreacting? Hmm, maybe, but if you think of some of the worst films you've seen chances are this issue is at the core. If Kevin Smith is good patron of this misguided belief in action, Sam Raimi, director of Drag Me to Hell is probably the best, the painful thing is he used to be good. In the 80s he gave us Evil Dead, in the 90s he gave us a Simple Plan and the Quick and the dead, then in the 00s with his name assured in Hollywood's mind he came up with 3 bloated quite uninspired Spiderman films and now this. Universal have gone on the fact that he can bring in the bucks but turned a blind eye to the fact that he is no longer capable of making a good film. Any film with a big enough marketing budget will make a lot of money (e.g. Batman & Robin) but people will continue to belittle Hollywood for producing crap if they continue with this. They could escape this stigma by having some faith in fresh talented directors, even the risk averse studio execs have to admit it works most of the time.
Time out...brief aside here, I'm talking a lot about a director as being the most important person in the movie food chain here and this is because in my mind he or she is. When you see something that makes you whoop or wince thats their doing, nothing in film happens by accident. Yes film making is a collaborative effort between a lot of creative minds in pre production, shooting and post production but the constant throughout the process is the director and their vision, they'll conceive, give birth and see the child through to adulthood, others turn up now and then to give advice on how to be a better parent. You form a relationship with the director as its their world that you're spending 2 hours in, its their actors you're engaging with and its their vision that you will accept, question or take issue with, in some ways you also get an idea of their life view through the messages and unique feel of their film. I would like to go down the pub and chat with Todd Phillips or Michael Mann, Sam Raimi wouldn't even get a text back.
Time In... There are plenty of examples of where studios haven't gone for the obvious director and in return got a very good film and made a lot of wonga. To keep it to 2009 movies how about McG? perhaps the biggest gamble of recent years and its paid off. He faced a carpet bombing of criticism for even attempting to direct Terminator Salvation, granted he only really directed the silliness of Charlie's Angels before and its an existing franchise he relaunched but he took it in a different direction (excuse the cliche), his interpretation of the Terminator world was vastly different to James Cameron's but looked impressive, the acting, the action, the twist, it was all there... it worked really well as a Terminator film, I don't think this would have been the case if they'd given the gig to John McTiernan (he did Die Hard, they let him have many more cracks of the whip and he didn't deliver) Matt Reeves had never directed a film before Cloverfield but that was a genuinely scary film (take note Sam) and one of the biggest sleeper hits of last year. Christopher Nolan had also never taken on the behemoth of an event movie before Batman Begins, yet he managed to get a near perfect balance of dark and light, action and dialogue to please geek and film goer alike and spawn a megalith of an all conquering sequel.
I think all of this is born of frustration of one bad film too many tipping me over the edge. Sure there are the hit and missers like Michael Bay, there are the underused like Martin Campbell (successfully relaunched Bond twice) but there's far too much reliance on a failing old guard in Hollywood, which to me is just plain lazy, get the genuine new talent in and let them create. Like most films there are holes in what I'm saying but like most good films I hope you can look beyond that... lets slap Hollywood execs in the face and give Sam Raimi and his ilk a wide birth.
