Raimi’s horrific ‘drag’

After Sam Raimi's horror movie success "Army of Darkness," he took to writing what would be his next horror picture not to be completed until long after his reign of "Spider-Man" films. Once hailed as a horror movie master with the "Evil Dead" series, Raimi's long awaited script does not deliver the spice that his films once did. In fact, "Drag Me to Hell" takes a long jump from his typical out-of-seat thrillers to a borderline comedic satire of the genre that made him the acclaimed director he is today.

"Drag" begins in 60s Mexico after a young boy finds a bracelet soon realized to be cursed by a demon who is hungry to drag the boy to hell. After a failed séance performed by mystical seers, the ground is ripped open and the boy is dragged down to the depths of hell by a demon to terrifying to show face. Years later, an innocent loan officer raised as a farm girl becomes cursed by the same demon and she must figure out how to banish it before three days or her soul, too, will be dragged to hell.

Christine Brown, played by Alison Lohman after Ellen Page turned down the part, is not the kind of girl you'd expect to be hunted by one of the most treacherous demons in history. She is a nice, quiet, sweet and innocent girl who wants nothing more in life than to be promoted to assistant manager at the bank where she works but must fight her way up the ranks when her boss constantly threatens to offer the position to her sneaky coworker, Stu. One day Alison is visited by a decrepit Gypsy woman (Lorna Raver) with a glass eye, snarled teeth, knife-like finger nails who begs Alison for a loan to pay for the only home she ever had. When Alison denies the Gypsy woman her loan even after begging, the woman makes a public seen and condemns Alison in front of her coworkers and clients.

However, public humiliation isn't enough for the Gypsy woman. After a long, dark walk into the parking garage of her work, Alison notices an 73 Oldsmobile Delta 88, which is one of Raimi's signatures in his work, parked behind her car. It isn't long before Alison is wrestling the Gypsy for her life, crashing into anything to get keep the woman from killing her.

After a vicious cat fight between Alison and the Gypsy, the woman rips a button from Alison's jacket, curses it with the mightiest of Gypsy curses, and returns the button back to her, which sets Allison up for the most terrifying few days of her life.

Once Alison escapes the fierce Gypsy, she begins to have horrific visions and is constantly attacked by the demon cursed upon her. She is victim to a series of brutal attacks that leave her house torn apart and her skin bruised by the infamous Greek goat demon known as the Lamia. When Alison wants to have these happenings investigated by a seer, her psychology teaching boyfriend Clay, played by the lovable Mac spokesman and costar of Jeepers Creepers Justing Long, doesn't put stock into the soothsaying banter fed to her by palm reader Rham Jas (Dileep Rao). Although he cannot bring himself to believe in what the seer tells Alison, Clay sticks by her side until the unusually anticipated ending.

Other than some difficult images to look at, "Drag" is nothing but a few repetitious scare tactics used since the dawn of horror movies. The first few scares of the movie are fast paced jump cuts of demonic figures reaching for the subject of the shot, such as in the opening segment when the young Mexican boy is taken into the fiery pit of hell, only the shadows of the hands of the demon can be seen quickly reaching out from nothing and nabbing the boy. It seems that Raimi constantly uses the fear of not knowing what's behind you to fuel the suspense in "Drag."

Raimi's use of CGI is nothing too impressive considering the girth of the storyline and the array of Raimi's past horror stunts and effects. Some of the sequences actually appear to be quite fake and call for laughter rather than screams. Even though the film is rated PG-13 rather than R and is not marketed to be a full blown horror movie, Raimi didn't hit home with his most recent attempt.

Critics Conclusion:

For having been on Raimi's mind since 1992, "Drag Me to Hell" should have been much more stimulating than the poorly crafted CGI scare flick that came to be. Raimi's initial concept for "Drag Me to Hell" called for a more impressive screenplay than what he and his brother actually put out. Overall, the film is entertaining with a few jumps and laughs, but the screenplay and the effects are generally too weak to make the film worth while. At best, "Drag" is nothing more than a quick attempt at a Gypsy/demon/animal sacrificing love story. C