Drag Me To Hell is a 2009 mystery/horror/slapstick film written and directed by Sam Raimi and starring Alison Lohman, Justin Long, Lorna Raver, and Dileep Rao. After seeing and highly enjoying Raimi’s new film ‘Send Help’ in theaters this month, I figured I’d just stick with the pattern and check out more of his horror filmography to review for the blog and share my thoughts with all of y’all. This story follows a young bright-eyed girl, Christine Brown (Lohman) who in an attempt to erase her country roots and past problems with weight moves to LA, starts dating a successful businessman named Clay (Long), and works at a bank as a loan officer. Her dream future turns nightmarish though because in an attempt to impress her boss and go for the VP position at her bank, she refuses a scary, sick old lady (Miss Ganush) an extension on her loan for a 3rd time and Ganush swears revenge and curses Christine to eternal damnation.
This was so obviously a Sam Raimi film. Now that I’m more familiar with directors and their styles and filmographies, I look for the little things in all of their films and Sam Raimi definitely has his own kind of style, especially when it comes to his horror films. This felt like ‘Evil Dead 2’ to me in a lot of ways. The crazy wackiness, over the top violence played for laughs, and all the gross out moments with things spilling out of people’s mouths. Primarily Miss Ganush. Bile, maggots and bugs, embalming fluid, you name it and Miss Ganush provided it in the form of vomit. She even bit, or more like gummed, Christine’s chin in the middle of their fight scene and drooled all over her in the process. Ganush was a complicated character because you felt bad for her in a lot of the earlier scenes of the movie. I mean she was an old, sick, gypsy woman who was getting tossed out on the street and that’s a gut punch in itself, but every scene involving her after that was played for fear or gross-out effect and that really made you turn on her and side with our protagonist Christine more and more as the film went. Christine wasn’t necessarily in the wrong either. I mean yeah, she made a pretty heartless decision for the company she works for, but she was doing it to be noticed by her boss and to attempt to advance in her company and be seen as someone who is capable of making the tough decisions when necessary. That’s something every human can relate to in some effect.
I feel like Sam Raimi likes to do stories about women being screwed over and overlooked in the workplace because this is the 2nd horror film of his this month that I’ve seen that involves that as a major plot device. Kudos to him I guess for the representation in that department though, but I just found it kind of funny and ironic that ‘Send Help’ & ‘Drag Me To Hell’ both involved that as major character motivation for the main characters. Seeing Justin Long pop back up in a horror film is just cathartic at this point too. He’s kind of an unsung horror king of the 2000s. Jeepers Creepers, Tusk, Barbarian, It’s A Wonderful Knife, most recently Weapons, and of course this. Generally speaking though, he usually plays the douche bag character in horror films. He’s the kind of guy you don’t really feel that bad for when he finally gets it because he’s been getting under your skin throughout the entire movie. That’s why it was a bit refreshing to see him as the loving and supportive boyfriend in this movie. I’m honestly trained to just not trust Justin Long when I see him in horror movies though, so I had my guard up around him for a majority of this film, but he really was just a good guy in this movie and that was nice. Give the man a bone every now and then damn it! He’s a good actor with range; he doesn’t always have to play the arrogant dick.
I really enjoyed the story of this movie though. There’s isn’t a whole lot of gypsy curse horror films I can think of off the top of my head. The only other one I can name currently is the original ‘Wolf Man’ from 1941 and this one of course added in the demonic effect to it as well. ‘The Lamia’ was the malicious curse in this movie. A powerful demon summoned to curse and torture its victim for 3 days before dragging them down to Hell with him. That was the major catalyst that drove this story forward, Christine finding any way she could to break this curse and sick The Lamia on someone else. Someone more deserving. Some of the set pieces in this movie were awesome too. Specifically, the graveyard scene near the climax of this movie was great. It looked like a practical set piece and felt like a throwback to horror of the 80s and 90s. Chef’s kiss. That was kind of my complaint with this movie as well ironically. Sam Raimi was known for his practical effects in horror from the ‘Evil Dead’ films and while this movie felt like the Evil Deads’ in its wacky and over the top elements, he relied a lot more on CGI in this movie as well, and it was like the not that great 2000s CGI at that. There were certainly CGI elements in ‘Send Help’ as well but that movie came out this year, so CGI has advanced quite a bit in the 17 years since this film. Everything involving technology has. I’m also just a sucker for old practical effects as a horror fan so I tend to really appreciate when those elements still pop up in movies, not everyone will notice that as much as I did probably.
All in all, I enjoyed this film though. It certainly isn’t one of my favorite Sam Raimi films and there were elements that were a bit much, but it was overall an easy hour and 40-minute watch that didn’t require too much brain power or effort to get though. Just some suspension of disbelief, which you can expect with almost any horror film to some degree anyways. It’s currently streaming on HBO Max so check it out if it sounds like your thing! That’s all for this one though folks. Make sure to like and follow the page on social media or bookmark the website to keep up with all my latest posts on horror films, WWE wrestling, new release films, and so much more! Thanks for the read and until next time, be good to one another.
