The worst thing that you could say about Drag Me To Hell, Sam Raimi’s latest film and his first horror film in over a decade, is that it’s stupid; or maybe that it’s a little racist, seeing as every non-white character is either conniving, possessing of mystical powers, or in league with Satan. But then again, the exact same thing could be said of all three Evil Dead films, and that does little to affect the entertainment value of those films. The point is, Raimi’s always done his most invigorating work when he’s operating outside the confines of a plot, character motivation, and even common sense - here he has pitched all of those so far to the wind that you’re almost wondering whether the man even understands what they mean. And it makes you want to forgive him for spending the last decade on all of those profoundly mediocre Spider-man films.
Christine Brown (Allison Lohman) has a pretty good life, but things could always be better. She has a good boyfriend (Justin Long), but his uptight, wealthy parents don’t respect her. She has a decent job at the bank, but still constantly fights for the esteem of her boss (David Paymer), who is somewhat apathetic about giving her a promotion. When an elderly woman (Lorna Raver) walks into her bank and requests an extension on her mortgage payment, Christine sees an opportunity to demonstrate her competence and toughness and denies it to her. Unfortunately for her, the old woman takes this as a profound insult, and sees this as a perfectly fine justification to put a curse on her in which a goat demon will (you might have seen this coming) drag her to hell after three days.
What follows is profoundly lacking in any kind of logic, full of story holes, and clearly put in for the sake of itself rather than the story; when Christine has her face vomited in for about the fifth time, you start to realize that it’s not really building up to anything. And, you know, that may not be your thing. There are plenty of people who would probably not enjoy the spectacle of an eyeball appearing in the middle of a cake, then having a fork jammed into the middle of it, spraying blood everywhere. Then again, people like that are probably not the target audience of the film.
While a few of her line readings are exceptionally flat, Lohman’s turn here could easily bring her up into the A-list (I suspect she was asked to deliver them that way to heighten this film’s gothic atmosphere). In spite of Lohman, this is clearly Raimi’s film every step of the way. Even though he’s found mainstream acceptance outside of Spider-man with The Gift, A Simple Plan, and The Quick and the Dead, Raimi is best remembered for the Evil Dead trilogy, a franchise he started when he was still in college. It feels good to report that Hell is very much in the tradition of those films (there are more than a few overt references to Evil Dead 2 here), even though it never feels restrained by its PG-13 rating and clearly has a bigger budget than his earlier films. In fact, it never really feels restrained by anything. While other filmmakers have strained for their gross-out effects, with Raimi, it feels like something of a natural state of being, and having this film after a decade and a half of mediocrity only serves to remind us of that. This is by far his most idiosyncratic work since Army of Darkness, as well as one of the most unique personal films to come out of a major studio in the past year.
But, as was noted in the beginning, if there’s anything negative to say about this film, it’s that it’s dumb. And it is. Very, very dumb and completely uninhibited. But this film would be nigh unwatchable if it tried to be anything else, because then it would be untrue to itself. And that would be the dumbest thing of all.
"Drag Me To Hell" opens May 29, 2009 and is rated PG13. Horror. Directed by Sam Raimi. Written by Sam Raimi, Ivan Raimi. Starring Allison Lohman, David Paymer, Dileep Rao, Justin Long, Lorna Raver.
