Drag Me To Hell: 10 Things I Liked, 5 I Didn’t

Posted by Robert Fure (robert@filmschoolrejects.com) on June 1, 2009

Editor’s Note: As with many of our Ten and Five articles, this article does contain spoilers. This article may also attempt to be overly humorous, repeatedly rip out clumps of your hair, gum your face, and vomit in your mouth.  Consider yourself warned.

They would have you believe that Sam Raimi is back.  But did he ever leave?  And if he did, has he really returned?  In terms of his absence, someone who makes like a billion dollars with Spider-Man can’t really be said to be gone.  Instead of whacking [It's "waxing" Robert] phallicsophal [Did you mean philosophical?] I could just cut the games and get to it – is the Sam Raimi of old, the Sam Raimi of Evil Dead back?  Yes and no, but we’ll get to that.  In short order, Drag Me To Hell is getting blowjobs, aka good reviews, from pretty much every critic on the face of the planet, most of whom apparently don’t remember Evil Dead or even know what a horror film is.  That said, there were 10 things I liked and half as many I didn’t.  Let’s do this.

10 Things I Liked

10.  Justin Long and his iPhone

Some other sites may not like Just Long, but I think he’s funny.  Not quite “Professor” material, but I like him.  Plus, as the Apple guy, seeing the iPhone was a fun wink.

9.  Sam Raimi’s Oldsmobile Delta

This “inside joke” is so far on the outside that if you didn’t know the old Gypsy’s car has been in every Sam Raimi film, then you have no standing to talk about this film.  Heck, it was even in The Quick and the Dead, though it was hidden underneath some stuff.

8.  Some of the Humor

I don’t mind some humor in my horror, it’s fun.  There were plenty of silly things here that worked in an Evil Dead 2 kind of way.

7.  The Sound

This was a very, very loud movie and that is fun.

6.  Shadows

I liked the way the demon was shown through shadows and his goat-like design was cool.

5.  Blood Spray

The scene where Christine’s nose starts gushing blood was a good example of silly, bloody gore laughs.

4.  Here kitty, kitty

While you may be surprised what you’d do to escape the demon, I won’t be.  Though I wouldn’t kill my own cat – I’d just go buy a lobster and sacrifice it.  Then eat it.

3.  Dead kid

You may remember my last rant about children always coming out alive – not this time!  The film starts off right by sending a mostly innocent young child to hell, where he will burn for all eternity.

2.  Alison Lohman

Not sexy hot, but very next door cute. I approve.

1.  Talking Goat

The goat had the look of Evil Dead 2 and the foul mouth of Freddy Krueger.  While, like the rest of the movie, it was very silly, I found this image stuck with me most.

5 Things I Didn’t

5.  The Script

I had a lot of issues with the script, actually, some of which will be covered in their own points.  But there were some parts that just didn’t flow seamlessly.  One example – we see Christine can’t get the money to pay for the exorcism (or whatever) and then Clay reveals he already paid for it – but no one told him about it.  Also, if Christine is lactose intolerant, how did 2 ice cream sundaes and a half-gallon of chocolate ice cream not give her absolutely bowel destroying amounts of diarrhea?  Thirdly – there are no scares in the script, only forced jump scares through audio cues.  This movie didn’t scare you, it just told you when to scream.

4.  Utter Stupidity of the Characters

The helper during the seance is a complete and utter tool bag.  First, why bring a machete to the table to kill a demon?  I would pick a shotgun.  Second, all he had to do was kill a damn goat but he got outsmarted by a demon goat.  It was tied to a table!  The only way to screw that up was to cut the goat loose and guess what?  Yup.  Second, if your entire immortal existence depended on getting rid of the button, would you not just double check to make sure you were getting rid of the button and not say, a coin or an empty envelope?  I mean, seriously.  Your immortal soul is on the line here.

3.  Vomit

You can also add hair pulling and denture loss here, but come on, man.  What the hell?  The old woman manages to throw up on Christine like 4 or 5 times.  We get it, Sam, you think its funny, I think its repetitive.  Where was the horror, again?

2.  The Ending

You can read this weeks boiling point, but basically this innocent girl does everything in her power and chooses to do the right things at the end and still goes to HELL for ETERNITY.  Let’s be honest – the gypsy woman is a thieving bitch.  She stole a whole tray of candies from the bank desk.  She failed to pay her mortgage and had two extensions already.  She claims all this economic hardship, but clearly her extended gypsy family has enough money to throw a big party after her death.  And don’t we think she over reacted?  I mean, losing a house and having to live with your close knit family versus going to HELL for ETERNITY.  Christine didn’t even do the “wrong” thing by denying the extension.  They were already kind to this woman twice over.  She did the right thing by not passing the button off on some stranger.

1.  The Three Stooges Go to Hell

Calling this movie a horror movie is like calling my shit a pile of sweet chocolate cake.  Sure, my shit is in a pile, but that’s where the similarities end.  This movie had like, a vague horror theme, but it was more Repossesed than The Exorcist. If this movie scared you, you’re a giant sissy and have never seen a scary movie in your life.  If you think this is “good horror” you don’t understand what the word horror means.  This was a fun slaspstick movie, but was more along the lines of Scary Movie 5 than Evil Dead. See, Sam Raimi hasn’t returned to his Evil Dead self.  He may have returned to that level of writing – that is, with a few plot holes and a not necessarily impressive script, but he didn’t capture the same menace.  Evil Dead was  a horror movie.  Evil Dead 2 was a horror movie with comedy elements that tied into the main characters psychosis which developed because of his experiences.  Drag Me To Hell was a slap-stick comedy with a horror theme.

There it is.  My thoughts on Drag Me To Hell.  Honestly, I could have come up with another five dislikes, but overall I enjoyed the film and wanted to give it a mostly positive slant.  The bashing can begin now as I’m one of apparently only two people not to think that the Holy Ghost ejaculated this film onto celluloid.  The other nay sayer is fellow Reject and sometimes replacement Coroner Rob Hunter.  The two site horror experts.  The two boys on this site who loved the film, Neil and Cole, both wept open tears of terrified hysteria at My Little Pony and each sleeps with a night light.  Though to be fair, they sleep in the same room, so it’s really only one night light.  Take from that what you will.

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