Drag Me To Hell (2009)

Sex :
Violence :
Director Sam Raimi
Writers Sam Raimi, Ivan Raimi
Starring Christine Brown, Justin Long, Lorna Raver, Dileep Rao
Genre Cursed
Tagline Christine Brown has a good job, a great boyfriend, and a bright future. But in three days, she's going to hell.
15 second cap Hot young loans officer gets cursed after turning down old lady's application for extension
Country

Review

“I don't want your cat, you dirty pork queen!” – Lamia

Christine Brown is a loans officer and is in a dog fight for a promotion to assistant manager with her underhanded co-worker Stu. Her boss basically tells her she needs to toughen the frack up and make the hard decisions. Christine decides to reject an old lady’s application for extended credit on her house mortgage due to the old lady having no income and being two payments in arrears already. Bad decision – the old lady is a gypsy, and as we all know those people will drop curses on your arse quicker than you can scream “who let the goats out”.

The curse here is pretty straightforward, Christine will spend three days being tormented by the demonic Lamia before being dragged down to hell to spend an eternity in torment. Now that’s got to put a dampener on your day. Christine seeks the help of fortune teller Rham Jas – where’s Harry Erskine when you need him? – as she tries to find a way to lift the curse.

Can Christine avoid being dragged to hell and can we stay awake during the movie?

Sam Raimi will forever be remembered amongst dark genre fans for the seminal Evil Dead movies that helped drag the horror genre kicking and screaming to the attention of modern sense and sensibility. Unfortunately the Director quickly traded in the reputation garnered through his early movies for a glittering career making comic book no-brainer blockbusters for the Hollywood conveyor belt. As other independent horror Directors – looking at you, Tobe Hooper – have discovered, making quality movies and working within the Boredwood system doesn’t work so well. Drag Me To Hell sees Sam Raimi returning to the horror genre, much to the approval of horror fans everywhere. Unfortunately Raimi was unable to sustain his vision and drive from his earlier horror films, with his latest turning out to be pretty standard fare.

Sam Raimi throws on a cartoon for pretend horror fans who want to pretend they are scared. What the hell had happened to the dude behind a couple of horror classics

I was initially pretty excited to see what Raimi could do, given his sabbatical in mainstream bubblegum cinema, and was admittedly expecting something pretty special from the Director. The first sign that not all might be going according to the script was when the rating was delivered: a PG13 movie featuring demonic possession and soul grabbing? I would have expected a hard R18 coming down here, not a studio attempt to entice dollars out of tween pockets. How many scares could we expect from another run of the mill teen-orientated horror flick? No, this does not mean I am a gorenography fan in any shape or form. Regular readers of my reviews will know that I harbour a deep hatred toward Directors like Eli Roth, who replace horror with gore. What I would honestly expect, considering the film is about a demonic presence, is something slightly more sinister than the cookie cutter Mary Sue flick Raimi sent my way. The second strike for Raimi’s movie in my mind were the trailers that simply presented yet another teen horror flick with nothing of interest about it except the Director. Lacklustre came to mind, and I decided to wait on a DVD release of the film rather than ponying up at the box office.

Before you get behind your email program of choice and decide to let everyone know just how lame I am, consider the following cultural imperative in operation here. I’m from the land Downunder, and our horror flicks are a lot more edgy and experimental than the pap currently being served up by the Boredwood horror conveyor belt. To me, modern American horror flicks are simply cartoonish holding all the scare factor of Lindsay Lohan after a particularly hard night on the tequila shots. Actually to be brutally honest, LiLo on a bender is far more scary then 99.5% of the horror flicks currently coming out of Hollywood. And before anyone accuses me of being anti-American, I think there’s nothing much wrong with the independent horror flicks being made up North; Paranormal Activity, for example worked for me. Of course, PA required the audience to invest in the movie whereas Raimi’s flick is neon-signposting everything for the date night “I want to be scared” crowd.

While it would be less than worth our time to list the numerous plot holes Raimi barely manages to paint over as the movie progresses, it is perhaps worth highlighting a few of the more implausible moments – remember we are meant to be getting scared here, not wondering exactly what drugs Raimi may have been on while directing this hodgepodge of teen film night cannon fodder. Who exactly keeps an anvil suspended by a rope in their garage besides those whacky folk at ACME? Why exactly would Christine, who didn’t strike me as the home workshop type of gal, have an anvil to begin with? How many times are we going to see body fluids exchanged in a single movie? Admittedly it’s a pretty gross concept, but after the third scene involving the idea I was quite frankly bored, and wondering if Raimi wasn’t trying to flesh his film out to cinema length. A talking CGI goat! Raimi, this is 2009 not 1981 mate. Your soul is about to be dragged down to hell and you drop the envelope containing the one item that may save you from eternal torment. Naturally, you drop the envelope in a car amidst a pile of identical envelopes. And naturally you don’t bother checking if you have retrieved the right one! Anyone else thinking Christine is kind of deserving of her fate? Let’s face facts here, with smarts like these the gene pool is infinitely better off without her contribution.

Overall you do want to see how the movie pans out, though the plot pretty much can be seen lumbering over the far horizon, and you will be left with a slight feeling of irritation that Christine didn’t really deserve her fate, taking into account the various low lights inhabiting her world. Horror purists of the old school will of course not overly enjoy Raimi’s return to the genre. What exactly is the Director/Writer saying here, and could he have thought up a more inane plot device than a mortgage default? If we wanted to be brutally honest, there’s also a hint of racism in the prejudiced view of gypsies. But hey, I think I’ve voiced enough criticism at Drag Me to Hell.

Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) runs the full gamut of acting, from overdramatic to plain wooden. Anyone else not buying into her as a loans officer? That was about as believable as Tara Reid playing an archaeologist for mine. Justin Long (Clay Dalton) was just too all American, didn’t dig his character and thought he needed a good kick up the arse. Lorna Raver (Sylvia Ganush) just went hell for leather psycho, loved her performance here. Hey, I’m not about to say anything against the woman, she has friends in low places if you know what I mean. And finally Dileep Rao (Rham Jas) just rocked as the dude with the eye on the future. I wanted more of Rao in this one.

Christopher Young rolled up the score, and it was pretty predictable. Worked in places but was over-emotive in others. Really, we have to have violins for gypsies? Anyone else counting the number of clichés this movie is rolling out?

I stand by my decision to wait for the DVD of Drag Me To Hell. The flick was far too teen-orientated and by the numbers for this wild colonial boy. While I didn’t hate the film, and it was decent Friday night movie fodder, I didn’t come away from it with any fond memories either. Just another run of the mill Hollywood teen horror flick for mine; if Raimi hadn’t directed the flick it wouldn’t have got the buzz it did prior to opening. Nowhere near the classic people are claiming, and certainly not the best horror flick of 2009.

Prior to Drag Me To Hell getting a cinema release, the word was that this could be the big box office event of the horror calendar – guess folks had forgotten about New Moon. Raimi’s movie started well but then kind of died on its arse as the great unwashed weighed in with their opinion, which is always going to be far more influential than online reviewers can hope for. In the wash-up, Drag Me To Hell made $42.1 in North America, and a total of $86.1 worldwide. Considering the flick cost $30 million to produce that’s not a good result for Universal.

I’m going to be out on my own here, once again, but I'm not prepared to offer any sort of a recommendation for Drag Me To Hell. It’s another ho hum teen horror outing that appeals to horror light fans that simply don’t get the dark psychological movies that are the cream of the dark genre. If nothing better to do then hunker down and catch Raimi’s latest – it is better than the majority of horror flicks coming out of Boredwood in 2009, but end of day that’s not hard to achieve. You would have to drag me down to watch this flick again. Next on the Hollywood conveyor belt is ….

Sorry unable to embed a trailer as people are being precious over this one, which just about sums up the attitude towards this bulk standard tween outing.

ScaryMinds Rates this movie as ...

  Raimi disappoints with a cartoon rather than a dark outing.