Day 15: A painfully suspenseful movie
I didn't realise how difficult it would be to remember what films I found suspenseful, because suspense obviously cannot carry over to repeat viewings. It took me awhile, but I finally figured one out (and get to be a bit outside the box with it); Drag Me To Hell. Yup, Sam Raimi's return to horror, which can essentially be considered Evil Dead 4 but with Alison Lohman taking up the Bruce Campbell mantle, that a lot of people criticised for being neither too scary, nor too funny. I completely disagree. On rewatching, I find the film a hoot from top to tail, but I remember seeing the film in the cinema, and being on the edge of my seat, wishing the film would hurry along and the credits would roll, so I could end my torture. It has a ridiculous edge throughout, with these archetypal lovable characters thrown in to a situation with no easy escape (as you may remember, I find seemingly uncontrollable situations pretty terrifying), the scares slowly rising like a cart on a roller-coaster, with the Lamia's (a demon that is set on taking the soul of our lead after three days) attacks starting subtle; shadows, banging doors, etc, and eventually moving up to old lady corpses vomiting bugs.
The film famously seems to lose its mind halfway through, with cartoon anvils dropping from the ceiling, but instead of this causing me to scoff the film, it actually gave me a moment to catch my breath and remember 'it's a movie by the Evil Dead guy', and then I continued to be tense about where the Lamia might appear next. The film opens with a spectacular scene of a child being literally dragged to Hell, so you know that once the curse is in motion, it is only a matter of time before all sorts of matter hit the fan. And for my bet, the first viewing of Drag Me To Hell was as painfully suspenseful as any movie I can think of.
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