Drag Me to Hell Movie Review

Drag Me to Hell (2009)

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Written by: Sam Raimi & Ivan Raimi
Directed by: Sam Raimi
Starring: Alison Lohman, Justin Long, Ruth Livier
Rated: PG-13
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Plot
A loan officer who evicts an old woman from her home finds herself the recipient of a supernatural curse. Desperate, she turns to a seer to try and save her soul, while evil forces work to push her to a breaking point.

Verdict
This takes a tired story and manages to make it interesting. Raimi does a lot with very little in many scenes. For a Raimi or smaller budget horror movie fan, this is worth watching. This does not stoop to presenting torture as horror as is so common. Scenes are genuinely creepy, and some of the best scenes are the ones that show very little. It's a solid movie for fans of the genre.
It depends.

Review
Sam Raimi directed the just released blockbuster Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, but his first movies were two budget horror movies in the Evil Dead franchise. Those movies made me a fan of both Raimi and star Bruce Campbell. Campbell has been in every Raimi film except this one as he was busy with Burn Notice. Raimi ushered in the comic book super hero movies with Spider-Man in 2002. Raimi and his brother wrote this movie after Army of Darkness 1992.

Christine (Alison Lohman) works at a bank and wants a promotion. She's concerned she'll be overlooked for egotistical new guy because she's a woman despite proving her ability. The script sets up the plot well. We get why Christine refuses to extend a gypsy woman's mortgage despite the empathy she feels. It's almost too on the nose as there's no gray area, but part of that is setting up what's about to come.

Alison Lohman plays Christine

This gypsy lady curses Christine even though it's not really Christine's fault. This is an assault on service workers. The gypsy isn't attacking the root of the problem. Of course the movie isn't meant to be read into this deep, but I can't help but think about that. It's a common problem in the service industry. I get why the old lady is mad, but she really goes scorched Earth. With this movie it's just an easy way to set up a simple, but effective plot. It's not a groundbreaking premise, but it's done well.

Sometimes the only fix for a curse is a goat.

This takes the small moments where we generally feel safe and exploits them. Locked in your car or safe in your room is no longer safe. I never imagined a movie could create such a mood with just a house fly, but the imagery and timing in this is really good.

There's more than a few callbacks to Evil Dead. The yellow Oldsmobile is the most obvious.

The question this movie builds is where does it go. How does Christine lift the curse? Despite Christine's attempts to rid herself of the curse, nothing quite works out. I thought this was setting up a predictable trope for the ending and was relieved when it seemed to avoid it. The movie doesn't entirely escape the trope. The end is conclusive though I wish it didn't try to be so cute. Something straightforward would have been preferred.