Drag Me to Hell (2009)

Drag Me to Hell

By Calum Whitfield

Raimi’s return to his roots is a fun horror/black comedy well worth watching even if it does struggle to live up to its classic older siblings.

• 3.5/5 Cameras 🎥🎥🎥.5
• Directed by: Sam Raimi
• Starring: Alison Lohman, Lorna Raver, Justin Long, and Dileep Rao
• Where to find it: Netflix

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Sam Raimi is probably best known for his part in launching the ongoing superhero movie revolution with his Spider-Man trilogy beginning in 2002. Long before this, however, he made his name by creating the iconic horror franchise, The Evil Dead in 1980. In 2009, he returned to his horror roots with Drag Me to Hell. Was it worth the wait?

Drag Me to Hell follows Christine Brown (Alison Lohman), a former country girl turned city loan officer looking to make some progress in her career. To do this, she decides she needs to act tougher to impress her boss and as such rejects an elderly woman called Sylvia Ganush (Lorna Raver) for an extension on her mortgage. Sylvia begs on her knees but Christine sticks to her guns, leaving Sylvia feeling shamed. As revenge, she attacks Christine as she walks to her car, eventually cursing her when she tears a button off her coat, damning her to be dragged into hell by an evil spirit in three days’ time if she can’t find a way to break the curse. In the meantime, the spirit, referred to as the Lamia, torments Christine as she tries to find a solution.

Right away it’s worth saying that if you’re looking for a horror movie to get into your head and actually scare you, this isn’t going to do it. This film is fun from start to finish, with many moments that feel more like an old-school slapstick comedy. For those who have seen the original Evil Dead trilogy this should come as no surprise; Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness in particular both owe more to the Three Stooges than The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Horror Comedy like this is hard to do without descending into parody, but Raimi is a real master of this, and while this film doesn’t invoke a huge amount of “fear” it offers a lot of fun moments of suspense and “terror”, as well as some genuine laugh out loud moments. It’s a genuinely absurd movie with some real gross-out moments as well as some moments that just leave you questioning what was going through the writers’ (Sam and Ivan Raimi) heads when they came up with them (false teeth and goats have never seemed so crazy), but it manages to maintain its momentum the whole time building towards its big finale. 

The cast does a solid job throughout, Alison Lohman making the central character of Christine someone you genuinely want to see survive. This is what makes this film stand out from a lot of horror films of its era; films like the Saw franchise and the stream of slasher remakes that had been dominating the horror market at the time this came out saw their protagonists as nothing more than cannon fodder to be killed inventively, leaving them as one-dimensional and often genuinely unlikable characters. This limits any emotional impact the events taking place might have on their audience. This film recognises this and as such makes Christine someone you have real sympathy for, a woman trying to make a success of herself who genuinely cares about others who made one selfish mistake to help her career. By creating a character the audience cares about, the film can maintain a sense of tension even as the events on screen often turn to the absurd. Elsewhere we get solid performances from Justin Long as Clay, Christine’s supportive boyfriend, and Dileep Rao, a spiritualist Christine gets to help explain what’s happening to her, but ultimately this feels like a one-woman show. 

Despite this range of positives, the film does struggle to escape the comparisons to The Evil Dead and while I love the Evil Dead this leaves the film feeling less original and fresh than I perhaps had hoped for. It’s also not a film that will appeal to everyone. Despite being rated PG-13 in the USA and therefore not being that violent overall, it features some real gross-out moments that will put a lot of people off, and its slapstick humour may take those hoping for a more intense horror thrill ride right out of the film. The film also has a prologue that feels a little unnecessary. It sets up a scene later in the film, but it feels like an awkward and inorganic way to do so. It’s not a huge gripe, I just feel it could easily be skipped.

In conclusion. Drag Me to Hell is a fun return to Sam Raimi’s roots. Yes, it does feel like a slightly inferior tribute to The Evil Dead 2, but I’d take that over another Saw sequel any day of the week.