Buckaroo Entertainment / Ghost House Pictures – 2009

Starring: Alison Lohman, Justin Long, Lorna Raver, Dileep Rao, David Paymer

Directed by: Sam Raimi & Ivan Raimi

Okay.  Let’s get this out of the way right now.  I’ve often abhored parents who take their children to see so-called horror films.  I’m not talking about their teenaged children, here.  I’m talking about infants, toddlers, kids that are barely in kindergarten yet.  So, this morning when I took my normal spot just below the projector in the back row and a family with three young children sat beside me I was a bit taken aback.  I left my coat in my seat, thinking perhaps I’d wandered into the wrong theatre.  Hey, it happens.  But the readerboard read “12 – Drag Me to Hell – Now Seating.”  So, I climbed the stairs up to the back row and took my seat.  Still, as their infant child began to cry, I had to wonder if maybe they’d made a mistake too.  After all, Night at the Museum was showing next door.  I should have left it alone, but I kept thinking, “Do they realize they’re taking their kids to see a film called Drag Me to Hell?”

That brings me to my next point.  Can anything Sam Raimi do be considered horror in the way we’ve become familiar with calling certain films horror films?  I’m thinking now of the Saw and Hostel franchises, bloody, gruesome films hellbent on making you terrified by showing you, in every graphic detail, the mutilation of the human body both pre- and post-mortem.  And the answer is, no.  Sam Raimi, who by all rights is in his own league, cannot make a “horror” film.  No, he manages to take audiences to a completely altogether different place.  A place in which you can feel free to get comfortable, laugh, cringe a little, be mortified by the pervasiveness of oozing bodily fluids, and yes, sometimes be scared.

Drag Me to Hell, set in present day California, manages to make the old world myth of Gypsy curses relevant when a loan officer at a local bank, Christine Brown (played by Alison Lohman) manages to piss off an elderly woman by refusing her a third extension on her mortgage payment.  Dragged from the bank by security guards, the woman is shamed after begging on her knees for an extension.  Gunning for an open assistant manager position, Chris feels the pressure to “make the hard decisions.”  Which is unfortunate.  Later that evening, the Gypsy woman is waiting for Chris in the backseat of her Ford Focus and a girl fight ensues.  This scene, which is so indicative of Raimi’s work, really solidifies the thrust of the film – it’s fast paced, comically violent, unafraid to get dirty and play with fluids, and be a little scary.  As the scene comes to an end, the elderly woman rips a button from Christine’s coat and casts a curse on her.  Something, I’m sure, a lot of people across America have been doing to their loan officers over the last few months.

Chris spends the remainder of the film vainly attempting to remove the curse.  She evens convinces her adorable college professor boyfriend, Clay Dalton (played by Justin Long), to take for her to see a fortune teller.  Nothing seems to help, and as the curse unfolds, Christine is haunted by a dark spirit that has been called to take her soul to hell in the three days.  Raimi uses shadow, smoke, and sound to embody the looming spirit – to great comical effect, as it sometimes appears as a horned goat man shadow.  And if there’s one thing I’m scared of, it’s horned goat men and their extremely flexible limbs.

Which brings me back to the family of five, with the small children.  While the youngest cried off and on throughout the film, and while there are moments of intense action and the ocassional demonic image, there really isn’t too much about Drag Me to Hell which would make it grossly inappropriate for a wide range of audiences.  And let’s face it, they’re probably going to see much worse on television, if they haven’t already, and at least Drag Me to Hell will make them laugh.

The final word: Drag Me to Hell is one hell of a great summer film – while more suited to the end of the season, perhaps Labor day, when the days are still long and warm, but there is an air of something coming, something changing.  My biggest concern here is that this film will get lost in the shuffle.  And that would be a shame.  Drag Me to Hell is a rare, fun, light-hearted gem – and yes, it is filled with bodily fluid goodness.