Drag Me to Hell

Drag Me to Hell

2009

Director- Sam Raimi

Cast- Alison Lohman, Justin Long, Lorna Raver, Dileep Rao, Bojana Novakovic

            Christine is a twenty-something trying to make her mark in life. She has a cute boyfriend and a job in a bank with the potential for advancement. She is visited by what is the most disgusting gipsy woman that Sam Rami could imagine. The old gipsy wants a reprieve from the bank seizing her house even though she has missed several payments. Christine turns her down and after a little stalking, the old woman places a curse on Christine.

            Christine is haunted by a lamia, a kind of demon from Greek and eastern mythology. After seeking advice from a spiritualist, Christine finds out that the lamia’s MO is to torment the victim for three days and then take the victim and haul them off to Hell.

            The film has some genuinely scary, Satanic imagery; the shadows of horned creatures cast on the walls, hooved feat under doorways, clawed hands reaching up from hell. It also features some genuinely disturbing moments like a kitten being sacrificed. The problem is, that there are too many of the trademark Sam Rami slapstick moments. While they work in Army of Darkness to create a horror-comedy, they don’t fit well in a movie with such grim subject matter and give the film an unbalanced feel.

            Despite this flaw, I think the film is well worth seeing if for no other reason than the aforementioned scary imagery. It also has a creepy violin/ fiddle score that fits the gipsy motif. The impending sense of doom reminded me of the 1957 movie , Night of the Demon For me though, the scariest part of the film is not the individual elements but its overall theological premise. Usually when peopled go to hell its either because 1) they lived a life of sin or 2) they played with fire in the form of witchcraft or Ouija boards. Drag Me to Hell proposes a disturbing idea; that one can be condemned to Hell simply because they pissed off the wrong person!