Before being dragged to hell with Sam Raimi, Movies.ie recommends the following hell raising film
It might be the happiest or most pleasant of film titles we’ve ever read but ‘Drag Me To Hell’ is a guaranteed fright fest sure to make you check under the bed and sleep with your lights on. When Miss Brown is forced to evict a frail old lady from her home, she soon finds herself the victim of a terrifying curse and so everything around her begins to spiral into a hellish nightmare but will she be able to find her way out before she is truly consumed by evil. With that in mind we recommend these films to get you in the mood, for curses, monsters and a whole lot of evil!
The Shining
“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” What better way to alleviate that boredom than by going stark raving mad and trying to kill your loved ones as they run helplessly through a maze-like hotel. One of Stanley Kubrick’s greatest works and probably one of Jack Nicholson’s most noted performances, The Shining is a fantastic piece of film that offers a disturbing and harrowing inside into the lives of the Torrance family as Jack Torrance, father, husband and writer is driven beyond madness and into a psychotic rampage driven demented by the things he witnesses in the hotel he and his family must look after.
Ju-On: The Grudge
Would you dare enter a haunted house? What if the house looked just like every other one in the neighbourhood? A vengeful and cruel spirit haunts a family home in a suburb of Tokyo; the home is a haven for evil, a curse place that leaves its mark on all who dare enter it. When a young care worker finds herself assigned to an elderly patient living in the home she soon realises that not everything is right in this house and soon finds herself fighting to survive and beat the curse before it is too late.
The Haunting
A group of insomniacs desperately seeking help for their condition seek the help of the famous Doctor Marrow. Taking Marrow’s advice they sign themselves up for what they believe to be a weekend exercise that will allow them find some source of comfort and maybe even a cure. What they don’t know is that the house they are staying in is in fact haunted by a terrifying and awesome evil and Dr Marrow is not who he claims to be – while this version stars well known actors like Catherine Zeta-Jones and Liam Neeson, the original 1953 version is also well worth a look!
Dawn of the Dead
Trauma nurse Ana leaves her shift in the hospital on a what she thinks is a normal day, she returns home to her husband and falls asleep. She wakes up to a completely differenty world, one in which the dead now walk and attack the living – her husband now among the millions of other undead monsters. As she flees her home, she joins forces with other survivors in the hopes of finding safety and hope that the world will soon return to normal. Taking refuge in a mall with over a dozen people, they barricade themselves in against the evergrowing number of dead outside but with no sign of rescue and the claustrophobic surroundings of the mall, how long can they last in a world that is slowly going to hell…
Martyrs
A French film that is credited with bringing new life to the French horror scene, Martyrs is not your average horror snuff film. Lucie, a young girl is found wandering lonely roads, clearly malnourished and disturbed she is place in care where she meets and befriends another young girl Ana. Lucie confides in Ana about a dark and horrifying figure that tortures and mutiliates her, and Ana promises to help her no matter what the cost, but soon Ana finds herself trapped in Lucie’s world and it soon becomes clear that there are things far scarier than ghosts and monsters and that the power of the human mind and a lust for violence can be just as deadly and terrifying.
Drag me to Hell is in Irish cinemas from Friday, May 29th.