Drag Me to Hell

Review By: Tom Herrmann
TomHerrmann@TheCinemaSource.com

Movie Grade: B-
DVD Features Grade: A
Overall Grade: B

Sam Raimi recently took time away from butchering my hopes and dreams of a live action Venom in the Spider-Man film series to head back to his roots. That’s right, the man who brought you the Evil Dead series is back to give us more shockingly awkward laughs. As exciting of a scenario as this may seem, Raimi doesn’t give us the same genius we have received in his past films. No one is expected a movie on par with Evil Dead 2 but with this one there is something seriously lacking.

Christine (Alison Lohman) is a worker at a loan office, who is trying to appeal to her boss in order to get a promotion. After her boss lets her know that he needs someone who can make tough decisions, Christine makes the sore mistake of doing her job in denying Mrs. Ganush (Lorna Raver) a third extension on her foreclosure. Appropriately enough, Mrs. Ganush puts a curse on Christine. Now she has to survive three days of demonic torment before inevitably being dragged to hell.

Now that the title makes total sense, it’s time to reiterate everything from my theatrical review. It speaks to the film that there is nothing new and exciting that I have discovered in re-watching this one. There is almost always something new to pick up on, or that has a different meaning after not having seen the film after six months. Here I haven’t been treated to anything new, but at least it can be said that the films good qualities don’t lose their luster, but the bad qualities don’t come off as any more polished then before. This is even stranger being that this is the unrated director’s cut and not much seems to have been altered. Maybe if the theatrical and unrated versions are watched back to back (both of which are included in this DVD) then differences may appear, but they will be subtle at best.

One difference between the first viewing of the film and this more recent one is the abundance of debate about this movie going on. Abundance of debate might make it sound like there is more discussion going on then there actually is, it is more like abundance of arguments as well as apathy. Reactions for this film ranged from “awful” to “brilliant” resulting in extremely mixed feelings. Even after watching it again, the conclusion seems to be that it falls somewhere dead center of those two descriptions. With moments in the film that are both high and low it is hard to praise or denote the film. Average may be a less than satisfactory feeling towards a Sam Raimi film, being that expectations would lead one to think this would be outstanding.

The Production Diaries is an inside look into the special effects of the film. Keeping in mind that these ...