The best-named movie of '09 now has a trailer

Guru once said that it's "mostly the voice," but I beg to differ. For my money, it's mostly the title. That often-neglected and rarely nailed eye-grabber, deal starter. The evidence is easily seen on the backs of rap album packaging (this applies to all music genres, of course, but let's stick to rap here)---I don't know about anybody else, but when I flip over some Yung Thugga lame's CD and read song titles such as "Keepin' It Real," "Gangsta Shit," "I Got That Swag," and "My Kinda Chick," I immediately delete anything to do with Yung Thugga from the memory bank and move on to Terrible New Rapper Number Two. Who will surely have even more sans-creativity/red-flagged titles to offer. On the flipside, I'd give plenty of day-time to any new release from a group such as Jedi Mind Tricks; sure, they're music always sounds the same, and Vinnie Paz's spit is like acid dripping on the eardrum, but that's a nowhere-road I'm willing to take when their songs are called shit like "The Age of Sacred Terror," "Tibetan Black Magicians," and "Chinese Water Torture." Reading those titles, I'm left clueless as to how such weighty ideas will work in a rap tune, but I'll gladly listen for myself.

In simpler terms, effective titles can do little more than spread the product's general story out in clear-cut ways with a basic hook. Case in point: Sam Raimi's return to horror, Drag Me to Hell. Best horror movie title in the last few years? Could very well be. Succinctly states that some craziness will commence, yet remains just foggy enough to draw intrigue. The plot has something to do with a girl who pisses off the wrong demon and begins feeling the brunt of Hell's fury, which works for me. All I ask of this flick is that it signal an "I'm back" to Evil Dead/batshit-nutty-setpieces horror for Sir Raimi, who has now established himself as a blockbuster wizard thanks to the Spiderman franchise.



Just in time to play in front of this week's The Last House on the Left (a film that I can already tell will require tons of explanatory defenses-of-enjoyment on my end), here's the first trailer for Drag Me to Hell. If I hadn't already read a slew of fawning response from horror talking-heads after a test screening last month, I'd be a bit concerned as a result of this trailer. Not a total failure, but hasn't done enough to send anticipation into overdrive. Faith is being comfortably had, though. Word is that the seance sequence (which we can see glimpses of here) rocks the shit. The lack of Jessica Lucas (who co-stars as the lead's, Allison Lohman, best friend) presence in this preview is disheartening (my fellow Cloverfield respect-ors know who I'm talking about), but the amount of demon arms promises a smorgasbord of creeps. And that's always celebratory.

Your EZ-Pass to Hell awaits: