Drag Me to Hell

Drag Me to Hell
Directed by Sam Raimi
Runtime: 99 min.

Pity the poor schlemihl that goes to see co-writer/director Sam Raimi’s Drag Me to Hell believing the posters that advertise the film as a product of the filmmaker responsible for Spider-Man. In its gross-out humor, the film is more in the vein of the cult filmmaker’s formative campy horror films The Evil Dead and Army of Darkness. It’s tempting to commend him for so neatly casting aside his relationship with that franchise here—there’s a lot to be said on behalf of any film that’s as invested in its schlocky, over-the-top humor as Drag Me to Hell is. There’s also something fundamentally disappointing about watching Raimi use his considerable resources to just make more wonderful scat.

Based only on its premise, Drag Me to Hell may as well be a Val Lewton film remade with an attention to excess that out-80s any of that decade’s revivals of now canonical ‘50s horror and scifi flicks. Christine Bell (Alison Lohman) is a nice girl that desperately wants the assistant manager position that her manipulative boss Mr. Jacks (pitch-perfect David Paymer) is dangling over her head. To prove her competitive nature, she denies an elderly, hilariously foul-looking gypsy a third extension on her mortgage and, as a result, gets cursed. Take the amateur psychology and supernatural elements of The Seventh Victim, add the perversity of Cat People and mix in hefty doses of Raimi’s signature puerile sense of humor and you’ve got Drag Me to Hell.

This kind of schlock is nothing new for Raimi, but the difference between excusing him for making such a film now and excusing him for making it early in his career is that he’s grown as a director. While he’s never consistently aspired to make films more challenging than those that revolve around oral fixations and projectile fluids, he has shown in films like A Simple Plan and Spider-Man 2 that he's a technically competent filmmaker. In Drag Me to Hell, his camp is no longer used to hide inept artistry, just an immature filmmaker from any kind of substantial challenge.

Raimi’s creative collapse during the final act of Spider-Man 3 might have been a valid enough excuse for most other artists to go to their happy place and creatively indulge themselves. Considering that Raimi’s made a career out of that kind of decadence, he probably doesn’t deserve such a reprieve.