Drag Me To Hell

Last night I had the priviledge, and I say that loosely, of watching "Drag Me to Hell" starring Alison Lohman and Justin Long. I had previously spoken to a few people who seemed to be "scared shitless" by this movie, so I was expecting a good revival of the horror genre. Not much generally scares me, and I'm essentially immune to the effects of gore (although in "Hostel" when Jay Hernandez was forced to cut off the Asian girls dangling eyeball I did cringe a little). Drag Me to Hell was directed/written/produced by Sam Raimi who has created some amazing work such as "Evil Dead" and also some shitacular work like the Spiderman series. So really, before I threw the disc in the DVD player, I figured this movie could be pretty sweet or a huge piece of shit.

The acting in this movie was horrendous, but I really wasn't expecting much. I was however a little surprised with Justin Long's performance. He first won me over in "Jeeper's Creepers" as Darry, a boy who meets his untimely demise by a cannibalistic monster who has a fetish for smelling underwear. In Drag Me to Hell he plays Clay Dalton, the son of a rich family who is dating raised-on-a farm, loan officer Christine Brown.

The movie starts off with Christine in a meeting with this old Eastern European woman, named Sylvia Ganush who is in dire need of a manicure and some new dentures. She has a glass/badly cataracted eye which makes her even more creepy looking. Also, she seems to have some bad problems with her lungs and coughs up a lot of phlegm. She is seemingly a minor character with some pretty damn good stamina and ass kicking skills. There's a point about 20 minutes in where Sylvia and Christine are battling inside a car and the car crashes into an SUV. Sylvia's dentures fly out of her mouth, and in an attempt to injure Christine further, latches her mouth onto Christine's jaw and begins 'gumming' her. I'm pretty sure I laughed harder at this part then I have laughed in the last little while.

The whole point of this movie is that Christine denies Sylvia an extension on her mortgage, Sylvia gets pissed and curses Christine. Christine is then haunted by a 'Lamia', a demon who looks like a goat on two legs who wants to seemingly "drag her soul to hell" and feast on it for all of eternity. All in all, this movie wasn't scary. It was hilarious. From someone barfing cockroaches and maggots into a girl's mouth to embauming fluids to a talking billy goat. In terms of a "horror" movie, it's so bad it's ridiculous. I wouldn't pay to see it, and you shouldn't either, unless you like seemingly ridiculous movies such as this. I didn't want to go into a lot of detail about the movie because everyone has different tastes and I didn't want to spoil you. All in all, I'd probably rate this movie a 3/10, with extra points for the pissed off goat.