Cody Hamman offers up Film Appreciation for Sam Raimi's Drag Me to Hell.
Director Sam Raimi started his career with the horror classic The Evil Dead, and even though he has gone on to direct high profile films of various genres, he never strays away from horror for long. He produces horror movies like Don't Breathe and Crawl on a regular basis, and every once in a while he'll direct a new horror film - for example, after he directed his Spider-Man trilogy, the next movie he made was 2009's Drag Me to Hell.
Written by Sam Raimi and his brother Ivan, who also wrote Army of Darkness with him, Drag Me to Hell was a script that Raimi dusted off after it sat on a shelf since the '90s. I'm grateful he did decide to bring it to life, because this is an incredibly fun film, and it was a joy to see Raimi working with this sort of horrific material after he spent a decade crafting superhero adventures (which I loved, but more Raimi horror is always appreciated).
The film begins with a sequence set in 1969 Pasadena that gives us a look at the fate that will be hanging over the lead character's head for the rest of the running time. The parents of a young boy seek the help of a medium named Shaun San Dena (Flor de Maria Chahua) because the kid has felt that something supernatural is coming after him ever since he stole a silver necklace from a gypsy. San Dena tries to help him, but her home is invaded by invisible forces that toss the adults around, then the ground splits open beneath the kid and he is literally dragged to Hell by an inhuman hand.
Move ahead to present day and we're introduced to the lead, Alison Lohman as Christine Brown. A Southern girl who used to be overweight, Christine is trying to reinvent herself now that she has moved to Los Angeles. She listens to a diction CD that's helping her conceal her Southern accent, she deprives herself of tasty treats, and she's determined to land the assistant manager job at the bank she works at. Her ambition is at least partially fueled by the fact that she's dating a psychology professor, Justin Long as Clay Dalton, and Clay's wealthy mother thinks he should ditch this "farm girl" he has been seeing for almost a year and go for someone who can "help him socially". Like a successful attorney. Christine has to prove her worth. Problem is, her boss Jim Jacks (David Paymer) has been very impressed by the recently hired Stu Rubin (Reggie Lee), largely because Stu is able to make "tough decisions".
Then Christine finds elderly gypsy woman Sylvia Ganush (Lorna Raver) sitting across from her at work, begging for an extension on her mortgage payment so the house she has lived in for thirty years won't be repossessed. She hasn't been able to pay her mortgage because she has been dealing with health issues. Can't Christine help her? Christine would like to, but Mrs. Ganush has already been granted two extensions, so Christine uses this opportunity to make a tough decision that will impress Mr. Jacks: she tells Mrs. Ganush she can't have another extension. The old lady is going to lose her home.
This moment is the first time the viewer might disapprove of something Christine does, but it won't be the last. She is not a heroine we can root for every step of the way, she is a flawed person who makes selfish decisions, and even though we can understand the reasoning behind everything she does we still can't condone some of it. She may not deserve a punishment as severe as being dragged to Hell, but I wouldn't be throwing a party for her, either. Lohman plays the character very well, though, and I always get amused when Christine's real accent slips through in moments of excitement.
After work, Christine goes to her car in the parking garage to find that Mrs. Ganush's car - the Oldsmobile that Raimi likes to stick in his movies - is parked nearby... and the old woman is waiting for her in her backseat. The confrontation that plays out in this parking garage is the first indication of just how hilarious Drag Me to Hell is capable of being while telling its horror story. The fight between Christine and Mrs. Ganush is pure, unleashed Sam Raimi and involves car smash-ups, flying dentures, a gumming, and a ruler stuck down a throat. It's gleeful insanity that really shows this movie is from the same director who was behind Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness. By the end of the scene, Mrs. Ganush has taken a button off of Christine's jacket and placed a curse on her. The curse of the Lamia. Christine and the viewer will come to learn that the Lamia is a demon that torments a cursed person for three days before dragging them to Hell. Christine will also find out that the button is an important part of this curse, and if she passes it to someone else that person will be taken to Hell instead of her. And she gives some thought to who she should have sent to Hell in her place.
But Raimi has three days of horror fun to take us through before we find out for sure who will be going to Hell, and he packs those days with creepiness, gags, and grossouts. Sometimes the Lamia's method of torment is to make Christine endure over-the-top haunted house style moments, but at other times it puts her through things that are utterly disgusting. Christine dreams of having maggots vomited into her face, twice wrestles with a corpse, gets formaldehyde in her face, suspects a fly is living her stomach, chokes on a sentient handkerchief, gets the worst nosebleed ever... There's even a moment that's like a live action cartoon in which Christine hallucinates that she's being attacked by Mrs. Ganush (who passed away right after cursing her), and the way she handles this attack is to drop an anvil - that just happens to be hanging on a rope in her shed - on the old woman's head. Mrs. Ganush's head explodes CGI gore all over Christine's face.
If moments like that aren't enough to shock and/or appall you, you could still be shocked/appalled by the decision Christine makes when she hears a blood sacrifice might be the way to break the curse.
Christine gets much of her information from fortune teller Rham Jas (Dileep Rao), who eventually takes her to see Shaun San Dena (now played by Adriana Barraza). The plan is to conduct a ritual that will involve a goat being possessed by the Lamia, and this ritual is my favorite part of the movie because it's the furthest the movie gets to Evil Dead territory - in fact, I would say that this scene makes it clear that Drag Me to Hell takes place in the same world as the Evil Dead movies, because the demonic forces that show themselves during the ritual act a lot like the Deadites from the Evil Dead franchise. Raimi would go on to direct the pilot episode of the Ash vs. Evil Dead television series a few years after this, but at the time of this movie's release he was sixteen years removed from making Evil Dead films, so to get a taste of that madness here was a real delight.
"A real delight" is also a good way to describe Drag Me to Hell as a whole. The movie didn't catch on with the horror community to the degree that the Evil Dead franchise did, but it's another great horror offering from Sam Raimi. I loved this movie when I first saw it in 2009, and still love it to this day. It's gross, it's hilarious, it's a good time. The only thing it's lacking is an appearance by Bruce Campbell.
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