Drag Me to Hell

Starring: Alison Lohman, Justin Long, Lorna Raver, Dileep Rao
Directed by: Sam Raimi
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Horror, Thriller
2009

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: A loan officer (Alison Lohman) selfishly turns down a loan request made by an old gypsy woman. This provokes the woman to curse the loan officer, who now has three days before demons arrive to drag her soul to hell.

Review:

Tim: I was pretty excited about this movie- it was billed as Sam Raimi's return to his horror roots, and had received a good deal of critical praise for his efforts. Sadly, Drag Me to Hell is not nearly as good as people make it out to be. It is certainly a decent horror movie and does provide a few good thrills, but it doesn't do nearly enough to stand out. The movie suffers from a number of horror movie cliches and a few cheap attempts at frights, which is disappointing because Raimi is so much better than that. In the end, this is just a run-of-the-mill horror movie.

The cast may be a bit better than most horror movies. Alison Lohman does good work as the heroine, although she's not the greatest actress in the world, and has a few quite weak moments. Still, for the most part, she works well enough. I also liked Justin Long in this movie. He surprises me nearly every single time I see him on screen, and again, he was surprisingly good here.

The film's story is somewhat original. It was fun to watch a movie about a woman battling a curse, instead of a deranged psycho. How do you defeat a curse, especially one designed to drag your soul into the depths of hell for all eternity? That is a pretty scary proposition, and provides the fuel for this movie to maintain a pretty constant state of suspense. Raimi does good work here, but fails in other areas.

Sadly, this isn't the scariest movie- indeed, it is not even as close to being as scary as it believes itself to be. We know that the curse will claim Lohman's soul in three days- so pretty much everything that happens up to that point is anticlimactic. So, all the scary shapes, sounds, movements, mainifestations, and the like are creepy, but not exactly scary. We know Raimi is going to save the real frights until the end. Many of the "scary" moments don't deliver- they are cheap tricks, ridiculous events that really push the boundaries of reality. Even worse, the film has a big "twist" that is telegraphed in the most obvious way. Throughout the last twenty minutes, I kept silently praying that the movie wouldn't take the obvious, silly route, but it did. That was disappointing.

Drag Me to Hell has a few good moments, and at the very least, has a fairly strong story. The problem is that it fails in too many other areas- it succumbs to the easy way out far too often. As a result, this might be a decent (but disappointing) movie, but it had the ingredients to be so much better. I like Raimi and I wanted to like this movie, but it was all just too much. This film is simply far too weak.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 6



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