Drag Me to Hell – Film Review

Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) has a loving boyfriend (Justin Long) and a great job at a Los Angeles bank. But her heavenly life becomes hellish when, in an effort to impress her boss, she denies an old woman’s request for an extension on her home loan. In retaliation, the crone places a curse on Christine, threatening her soul with eternal damnation. Christine seeks a psychic’s help to break the curse, but the price to save her soul may be more than she can pay.

Can you believe that Sam Raimi‘s Drag Me to Hell is only rated PG-13 and not a hard R? I, for one, can’t. The MPAA rating board is infamously tough when it comes to doling out ratings for films, with many receiving R ratings even though they’re not that heavy content-wise. Sometimes all it takes is a few F-bombs and you got your R rating, like it or not. Drag Me to Hell is not only visually haunting, has swear words in it, and demonic possessions, but it also features animal deaths. A number of them. All of this and yet, it received a PG-13 rating.

Because of this, I feel quite comfortable in saying that Drag Me to Hell is one of the best PG-13 horror movies ever made. Even though it runs at a brisk ninety-nine minutes, it’s ninety-nine minutes that absolutely fly by and it’s all thanks to Raimi’s excellent direction, his script he co-wrote with his brother Ivan, and the performances. And, yes, it’s legitimately creepy and has a few jump scares but they are actually surprisingly effective.

As mentioned already, this film does not give the viewer a moment to breathe. In some films, this can be a problem because you feel as though you can’t get to know any of the characters because the movie is just moving non-stop. We get bits and pieces of information about our lead protagonist Christine and her boyfriend Clay throughout the film, but it’s almost always followed by something unsettling.

It also serves as a brilliantly thought-provoking movie surprisingly enough. It presents us with a woman whose entire life is being ruined day-by-day by a mysterious demonic entity and she is forced to do whatever it takes in order to get rid of it, even if the things she has to do make her extremely uncomfortable. It asks introspective questions that will seriously make you think how far you would go in order to save yourself; something that a lot of horror films simply don’t even bother to attempt.

A lot of this film’s greatness is due to Sam and Ivan Raimi’s script which is extremely fine-tuned and robust. Aside from maybe one or two scenes, it feels relentlessly paced and every scene feels purposeful. Plus, the performances are some of the best in the horror genre I’ve seen in years. Alison Lohman plays a girl who is dealing with demonic possession almost too well and Justin Long delivers a nuanced and understated performance as Clay.

There really isn’t that much to dislike about Drag Me to Hell. Its ending is a bit frustrating and it does have a few scenes that are out of place, but in the long run, it’s a brilliantly executed horror film that further proves why Sam Raimi is such a talented filmmaker.