Movie Review: DRAG ME TO HELL (2009)

Hello again, ghosts and ghouls!

I know it’s been a long, long time since I’ve done a review of a horror film here on Nightmarish Conjurings. I’ll be honest, life has been crazy, but in the back of my mind, all I can think about 99% of the time is horror.

With that being said…I lent a coworker my copy of Hellraiser II: Hellbound, and when he gave it back (after loving it, of course), he handed me his copy of Drag Me to Hell, and I thought to myself “well, here’s my excuse to seriously sit down and finally watch another horror film!”.

I had posted about watching it on Instagram the day before I sat down to actually go through the whole thing, and I got so many mixed reviews. Some people said it was the worst they’d ever seen, some people said it was their favorite, and others said it was just okay, so I went in trying to push their opinions out of my mind so I could form my own.

Drag Me to Hell tells the story of Christine Brown, an average girl working at a bank, when an old woman comes in begging for an extension on her mortgage. When Christine tells her no (for the sake of trying to get the position of assistant manager at the bank), the woman curses her. The entity coming to get her is a demon goat spirit, essentially, and you have three days for it to torture you, and then it comes to steal your soul.

Well, about five minutes into the movie I said “wow, this is terrible”. About 45 minutes into the movie I said “okay, this could be worse”. About an hour and five minutes into the movie I said “it’s not good, but it’s not awful”.

The acting is mediocre, but the film itself is campy and fun. It seems like it’s intentional, though I really can’t tell and that’s why I had such a hard time truly enjoying this film. If it were campy and cheesy like Cabin in the Woods where the intention was to clearly make fun of itself, I think I would have enjoyed it more. However, it seemed like this film wasn’t sure in the same way I wasn’t sure.

The effects are sub-par…they’re actually kind of awful. There’s just nothing realistic or exciting about any of it, because a lot of it is CGI and it’s really, really obvious. Again, this could entirely be intentional, but to me it took from the value of the film.

As far as cinematography and the way the film itself was shot, it looked great! I enjoyed the use of lighting to really set the tone of the scenes, and sometimes it even confused me where I would expect one thing based on the way the scene looked, and I got something entirely different, so it was nice that I was kept on my toes.

Story/Concept: 2
Direction/Style: 1
Scares: 0
Atmosphere: 1
Rewatchability: 0

That means the film gets a 4/10, which is what I would have given it without the NC rating system anyway. The film itself is very…okay. It’s not the best, but it’s not the worst. The story was awesome in theory, I just don’t think it was executed very well.

Let us know what you thought of Drag Me to Hell!

Taylor Krauss
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