Drag Me To Hell Movie Review
Drag Me To Hell Movie Review
You'll go, willingly.
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"I'm sorry," says basically good-hearted bank loan officer, Christine (Alison Lohman, bland yet believable) as she denies a destitute, sickly old woman, Mrs. Ganush's (an unsettling Lorna Raver), her last chance to live out the rest of her days in her home. Extension denied. But sorry isn't good enough for the half-blind, heavily accented, grotesque gypsy hag… Oh, yes: I said gypsy. And as every moviegoer worth their popcorn salt knows, in a horror film, a gypsy always has a handy curse just waiting on the tips of their tongues.
The furious Mrs. Ganush is no exception, but before she delivers her fateful words, she initiates an after-hours parking-lot brawl with Christine that rivals even the hair-raising underground structure struggle seen in P2 a couple of years back. But this one is played for scares and snickers. Wildly intense and intricately choreographed, director Sam Raimi injects absurd humor into the horror of this scenario involving staplers, screeching tires and sharp dentures. It is wicked!
Christine barely escapes with her life. After the old woman finally flees the scene, the shaken-up loan officer files a report with the police and then immediately heads to the solace of her kind, understanding, and nurturing boyfriend, psych professor Clay (a loveable Justin Long). He takes her to a pleasant dinner in hopes of helping her digest her ordeal, but as they head back to his car, Christine sees a sign in a storefront window: Psychic Advisor (Jas, played with grace and poise by Dileep Rao). Long story short, the seer reveals that Christine is hopelessly cursed and has only three days to sort it out… or get dragged to hell, never to return from its infernal, eternal flames.
There is a goat-like minion of the underworld called the lamia, and its purpose is to torment Christine day and night until her final comeuppance. But surely, there are ways to counteract a curse… and Christine tries them all, flanked by supportive Clay and skilled Jas. As the movie zips along, there are so many great signature Raimi moments — fans of his Evil Dead movies will be delighted, while those who only know him from Spider-Man may be confounded — that I don't want to spoil anything specifically, but let's just say there are gruesome gross-outs and mushy moments that you really shouldn't be laughing at… but if this sort of thing is your thing, you will.
Comedy and horror are hard lines to straddle, and no matter how talented the filmmaker, not many can pull it off. While still to my mind the best most-recent example of this is Michael Dougherty's hard R-rated Trick R Treat (as-yet unreleased), Raimi's PG-13 freak-out runs a close second.
Just as heavily reliant on cringe-inducing visuals (mostly practical in the Evil Dead movies, and still practical — only a bit of CG here — thanks to the amazing talents of KNB) and sight gags as ever, Raimi makes the most of it all with invasive insects, projectile vomit, spewing blood, and possessed people used as broken demonic puppets.
There are also some fun little subliminal things sharp eyes will spot (Mrs. Ganush's license plate, 99951, of course could be flipped to read as "IS666"; and on a train platform Clay awaits Christine under the number 13), however, I was disappointed that there wasn't the obligatory Bruce Campbell or Ted Raimi pop-up. (But it's cool to see Evil Dead II DP Peter Deming back in full force with his signature zooms and swings.)
My only other complaints about the film are minor: even at 90 minutes, it starts to feel a little too long toward the end (I guess you could say it "drags"); you can see all the "twists" coming (but it's fun to await their inevitable pounce); and there is one really big, obvious "gotcha!" laugh during the séance scene which doesn't happen (a reaction shot from a certain Capra aegagrus hircus). But as I said, those are tiny nit-picks — overall, Drag Me To Hell pays off with playful, powerful panache.
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Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson