Drag Me To Hell : Unrated Directors cut Review

Sam Raimi who delivered 3 Spiderman box office blockbusters, got his start making very low budget movies that were full of innovative, imaginative, and quite over the top special effects in Evil Dead.  It's been 17 years since he's made  Army of Darkness the third is in his Evil Dead trilogy.

Drag Me To Hell was delivered to theaters as a PG13 gift to his fans, in the hopes the under 16 crowd would flock to his campy horror tale.  

The film bombed at the box-office. The unrated DVD is at least close to the wild ride of a movie his fans wanted to see.  It's full of gross outs, involving insects and maggotts and arms shoved down people's throats and slimy dentures flying about too.   There's some decent set pieces, decent special effects, some chuckles and a good ending.

Drag Me To Hell is a good Halloween movie. 

 Reasons to see  Drag Me To Hell

• 1. Sam Raimi directed. He hasn't directed a horror movie in many years and that's good news for his fans.
• 2. It's not a slasher or torture porn kind of horror movie
• 3. It's pretty good
• 4. It's starts well and had a good ending.

 Reasons Not to See  Drag Me To Hell

• 1. Sam Raimi directed and you don't like his movies
• 2. It's a campy, cartoonish type of horror film
• 3. Mediocre script, several characters are two dimensional
• 4. A few jumps and gross out but no really 'earned' scares.

PLOT

After a very brief pro-logue in which a young child is taken by a demon spirit in a very large mansion, while a young Mexican woman screams out in horror ... the movie begins in present day.

Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) is a loan officer at Union Bank who is up for a promotion but her rival is a back-stabbing, jerk who's willing to cheat and lie himself into the promotion if he needs to (he's played by Reggie Lee last seen in Tropic Thunder).  Her boss is played by David Paymer (who's always fun to watch).   Her boyfriend, college professor Clay (played by Justin Long) is about to ask her to marry him, but first they have to meet his parents and his very picky domineering Mom.

Christine is anxious to prove she is the right person for the promotion, so she refuses to extend a home loan for a very old gypsy lady Mrs. Ganush (Lorna Raver).    She's quite upset and warns Christine she will be very very sorry for being so cruel to her.  And indeed she is.

Very quickly, Mrs. Ganush puts a really nasty curse on Christine and she begins seeing  terrible things.  Most of what she sees isn't actually there, but we see the hallucinations too and they are pretty wild.  Christine starts acting very strangely in front of her co-worker, her boss and her boyfriend.  At one point she has a geyser of a nose bleed for real and sprays her boss with blood who gives her the day off.

Next, Christine decides to seek the help of a psychic and spritualist, Rham Jas (Dileep Rao) much to boyfriend Clay's dismay.   Rham does 'feel' something and eventually a cleansing ceremony takes place which involves the now grown upo Mexican woman we saw in the pre-credit sequence, Rham, Christine, a goat and another young man.     The cleansing doesn't work quite as planned and.....

Enjoy the movie if you want to know more.

Justin Long is a supporting character.  He's used as the boyfriend who offers moral support, doesn't quite bellieve Christine, but stands by his girl.  It's an interesting gender switch... usually this role is played by the long suffering wife or romantic interest girlfriend.  Kudo's also for how well Christine can scream.

I wish I could tell you there was something particularly innovative or unique about the movie;  I can not.

If you like fast-paced comedy horror movies and/or Raimi's Evil Dead series, this one is right up your alley.

The Unrated DVD had a few minutes of additional footage.  There is also a multi chapter Video Diary going over several aspects of the movie and showing how many of the special effects were done.

3 and a half stars.. bumped to 4.   Good Halloween movie.