Drag Me to Hell (2009) Review
Director: Sam Raimi
Writers: Sam Raimi, Ivan Raimi
Stars: Alison Lohman, Justin Long, Ruth Livier
We start in Pasadena, 1969
A boy stole a necklace from a gypsy, and now he’s cursed. The people in the house are tossed around, and the boy is grabbed and pulled through the floor to Hell.
The Credits Roll (We’re told in headlines that the curse takes 3 days to take effect)
We move to modern times.
Christine works at a bank. A gross old gypsy woman comes in. Her house is being repossessed, and she wants an extension on her mortgage. The boss says it’s Christine’s call. She wants a promotion and tells the old lady there’s nothing that can be done. The old lady refuses to move in with her daughter or move into a nursing home. Instead, she gets down on her knees and begs pitifully. Christine calls security, and the old woman gets mean.
The old woman accosts her in the empty parking garage. It is, by the way, the only time I’ve ever seen a stapler fight. The old lady loses her teeth in the battle and tries to gum her to death. The old woman steals a button after the battle and uses it for a curse.
Christine and her boyfriend head home afterwards, and they stop by a fortune teller. He reads her and knows about the missing button. The room gets all weird and he sees the demon. “A dark spirit has come upon you. Perhaps someone has cursed you”
Later, it’s really clear that something has followed her home. She’s attacked by a dark shape, like the shadow of a demon. She’s confused about who attacked her and did all the damage. The boyfriend, naturally, explains it all away.
That night there’s a scene where she inhales a fly that is really good. Then she dreams that the old lady pukes worms all over her. Then she pukes blood all over her boss.
Naturally, she tracks the old woman down to her home. The woman is dead and this is her funeral. Christine tips over the coffin, and once again, the old woman pukes embalming fluid all over her.
She goes back to the fortune teller, and he says it’s a Lamia, a spirit that torments its victim for two days and then it kills them and takes them to Hell. He gives her a book about how to sacrifice small animals. Then the camera shifts and we see her small kitten. After the next attack, that cat is toast.
Catherine and her boyfriend go to visit his parents, and they’re stuck-up snobs. The only thing more awkward than a dinner with the inlaws is a demon attack.
Afterwards, the psychic says he knows a woman who can fix this for $10,000. The boyfriend actually comes through and pays for this. The psychic takes her to see the woman who helped fight the demon in the opening scene, who still wants revenge after all these years. Her house just happens to sit on a Hellmouth.
They set up a seance with a live goat, a machete, and all the works. They are going to drive the lamia into the goat and then kill the goat. Instead, it takes over the psychic. The lamia appears and there is more puke. She drives the demon out, but the psychic dies. It’s all over right? Of course not– it’s got twenty minutes to go.
The surviving psychic puts her button in an envelope. She’s told that her only chance is to give the button away as a gift. The curse will be lifted, but the person she gives it to will go to Hell in her place. Who should she give it to? She’s going to give it to the old woman herself. She digs up the grave (surprisingly quickly) and opens up the coffin. She dramatically stuffs the envelope into the corpse’s mouth. She survives the night.
The next morning, she goes to meet her boyfriend at the train station. It turns out that she mixed up the envelopes and didn’t give the button to the old lady after all.
She gets dragged to Hell.
Comments:
You’d expect the boyfriend to freak out after the weird dinner, but he actually stands by her. This is surprisingly rare in horror movies, and most filmmakers rely on the lack of support to create more tension. This film didn’t need that.
This is a very puke-heavy movie. Lots of spewing.
Best scene in the movie where Christine is digging through her shed for something to sell to pay the psychics. You never get tired of seeing the old “Anvil on the head with eyeballs shooting out” trope.
Still, this old woman stopped paying her rent, and the girl working at the bank is the bad guy deserving of a curse? Whatever happened to curse victims who actually got what they deserved?