(2001)
Dir - Dick Maas
Overall: MEH
Dutch filmmaker Dick Maas continues his fascination with vertical transport systems, remaking his own 1983 movie De Lift as Down, (The Shaft). An English-speaking, America/Dutch co-production that was shot on both sides of the Atlantic, this served as the first of several foreign horror remakes that Naomi Watts participated in, emerging the same year that she found international fame in David Lynch's Mulholland Dr.. Kicking up the camp, Maas goes for popcorn-munching goofiness in his story about a Manhattan skyscraper whose elevator system is possessed/inhabited by a reproducing, organic mechanical hybrid designed by Michael Ironside; a guy who is in cahoots with city officials in a convoluted conspiracy or whatever. An all-star cast of genre regulars and character actors help keep the comedic schlock in check with some of the gags and snappy dialog hitting their marks, plus the R rating is deserved as it pulls no punches with its list of innocent victims, casual profanity, and lousy CGI gore sequences. Nothing to take seriously of course, but that seems to be the point at least.
(2003)
Dir - Worm Miller
Overall: GOOD
A home movie with zero production qualities, Hey, Stop Stabbing Me! stands out as one of the more cleverly made SOV goof-fests, a rarity amongst rarities. The writer/director team of Josh "Worm" Miller and Patrick Casey cranked this one out with their buddies a full ten years before their Golan the Insatiable animated series debuted, looking like it was made for no money which is something that is essential to its charm. Cramming as many gags as possible into each minute of the running time, the story exists in a deliberately asinine universe where a college graduate nerd shacks up in a house full of other dweebs where everything that happens only follows the ridiculous rules of Miller and Casey's imagination. Rapidly paced, just as many of the nyucks nyucks fall flat on their face as they do land, but the sheer moronic bombardment of them is admirable, as is everyone's comedic timing and full commitment to such off-color, juvenile antics. Even things like casual gay jokes, Casey finding out in the third act that his girlfriend who sleeps with every other character is actually twelve years old, and free-flowing murder all seem to be on equally ridiculous footing with a sock-eating monster, a world historian job that consists of nothing but digging holes outside, and a guy with no musical ability who composes an unlistenable symphony that impresses everyone who hears it.
(2009)
Dir - Sam Raimi
Overall: MEH
On the shelf for ten years before it finally emerged as a "return to horror" after his trilogy of Spider-Man movies kept him busy for the better part of the decade, Sam Raimi's ridiculous revamping of Jacques Tourneur's Night of the Demon emerged in a post-Bush-Jr era where censorship scares were a plenty. The resulting Drag Me to Hell was therefor part of the dreaded PG-13 boom of genre films and one that wastes a large part of Raimi's more outrageous talents behind the lens. In place of gallons of blood, severed limbs, and entrails spewing at the camera, we instead have every other form of bodily fluid in an oral-fixation nightmare that is persistently hilarious and disgusting, yet also daftly void of bloodshed. On the one hand, it is as gleefully outrageous as any other Raimi joint, with all of the visual aspects cranked up to eleven and Lorna Raver delivering a culturally insensitive, cartoonish portrayal as a shamed gypsy who is hellbent on revenge. At the same time though, it tries to be a simple morality tale with a campless performance from lead Alison Lohman that hardly leans into the otherwise hyper-kinetic and silly aesthetic, causing tonal issues for days. Some of the most offensive use of jump scares further muddles up an already over-stuffed experience, but for those who can forgive its gratuitous amount of missteps and groan-worthy bombast, it is what one would expect from Raimi except dumber and more annoyingly neutered.
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