Horror Movie Review: Drag Me to Hell (2009)

Drag Me to Hell is a horror film that was co-written and directed by Sam Raimi, releasing in 2009. It follows Christine Brown, a loan officer. Sylvia Ganush places a curse on Christine after she decides against extending her mortgage. Christine must endure 3 days of escalating torment and figure out a way of stopping the curse. Otherwise, she will be dragged to hell to burn for all eternity.

Mrs Ganush violently attacks Christine in the parking lot. She rips a button from Christine’s coat and curses it. Later, Christine and her boyfriend Clay visit a fortune teller. They are informed about the dark spirit that now haunts Christine. At home, Christine is attacked by the entity and has visions about Ganush. At work, she hallucinates and bleeds profusely from her nose.

Christine goes to beg Ganush for forgiveness but discovers she has died. The fortune teller suggests that a sacrifice may appease the demon. Christine reluctantly sacrifices her pet kitten. Unfortunately, even that fails. When the possibility of banishing the entity via a séance delivers greater failure, all hope seems lost. However, the fortune teller informs Christine that she can now remove the curse by passing the button on to someone else.

Will she accept her fate? Or allow another to suffer in her place?

Drag me to Hell is a fun, unique horror film. However, it has a number of unfortunate issues. Firstly, this is a Sam Raimi movie. This is abundantly clear so expect large quantities of blood and even an eyeball in a mouth. If you’re a fan of his type of horror then you should have an enjoyable time here. The whole movie has an over the top and goofy vibe. This left me far more amused at proceedings than afraid. The overall tone felt a little bit confused to me.

There are certain scenes that are clearly done for nothing more than shock value. Unfortunately, some of them make little sense in terms of the continuity in the film. For example, the scene in which Christine gets a heavy, blood spraying nosebleed. It’s never mentioned ever again. Also, she is attacked by Ganush in her garage. It ends really abruptly with no explanation as to what happened afterwards.

In my opinion, there are far too many jump scares in Drag me to Hell. Having Ganush jump out at Christine is effective early on but it gets tiresome, it’s overdone. Also, the dialogue and delivery of it isn’t that good. Sorry Alison Lohman but I didn’t think you were that good here. It’s possible that her wooden performance was due to direction alone but who knows. She shows very little emotion considering the madness she experiences. To me, this made a lot of what happens lack impact. I will say that she does a wonderful job in terms of the physicality of the role though.

Justin Long at least delivers the appropriate level of emotion during the shocking conclusion.

On a positive note, the practical effects hold up well. On a negative, there is some horrible CGI.

Overall, Drag me to Hell is fun and better than your average horror film. This is mainly because Sam Raimi was clearly given free-rein to do whatever he wanted. Unfortunately, it’s starting to look its age.