Drag Me to Hell

Rating: 7/10 (3 June 2013)

From director Sam Raimi (The Evil Dead, Spider-Man), I was told by someone that this was rubbish, but the critics praised it with four stars out of five, and I was up for a possibly over the top scary movie. Basically, the film opens in 1969 Pasadena, California with a boy being attacked by unseen forces. Medium Shaun San Dena (Flor De Maria Chahua) attempts to stop the evil spirits from dragging him to hell, but she is unsuccessful, the ground opens up with a fiery blaze and the boy is taken, the medium knows she will encounter these forces again. In present day, Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) is bank loan officer hoping for a promotion to assistant manager instead of co-worker Stu Rubin (Reggie Lee), and Jim Jacks (David Paymer), her boss, advises she demonstrates making tough decisions to get it. One day, she encounters elderly woman Sylvia Ganush (Lorna Raver) who wants an extension on her mortgage payment, despite failing to pay it a couple of times. Christine is first empathetic, but decides to deny her request to prove herself to her boss. The woman gets on her knees and begs, but is still denied, and then she attempts to attack Christine and is taken out. In the parking lot, Mrs. Ganush returns and again tries to attack Christine, and during the struggle she tears off a button from Christine's coat, she places a curse on the owner of the coat, i.e. Christine, as revenge, and then she disappears. Christine is concerned for her safety, and despite some criticism from her boyfriend, Clay Dalton (Justin Long), the two of them visit fortune teller Rham Jas (Dileep Rao), and he has a terrifying vision and confirms she has been cursed. Following a horrific attack by an invisible evil force, Christine is shaken up, but returns to work. There, she gets frustrated with Stu and suddenly has a nose bleed, but this turns projectile and soaks her boss in blood, and while she runs away Stu takes an important file that would be likely to get her the promotion. Christine decides to confront Mrs. Ganush at the house to be taken, and have the curse lifted from her, but she finds the old woman has died and a wake is being held. She turns to Rham Jas, he explains that being the owner of the button, powerful demon Lamia will haunt her for the next three days before she will taken to hell. He suggests she could sacrifice an animal to appease the demon. Following another savage attack, and desperate to stop them, she kills her pet kitten, which breaks her heart. Christine has dinner with Clay's parents, father Leonard (Chelcie Ross) and mother Trudy (American Pie's Molly Cheek). There, the spirit still torments her, and frightens the Daltons. Christine again goes to Rham Jas, and he says Shaun San Dena (Adriana Barraza), now elderly, is willing to risk her life and exorcise the demon, but at the price of $10,000. Following more attacks, and knowing she believes strongly in what is happening, Clay pays the fee. The séance goes ahead, the woman manages to pull the demon from Christine's body into her own, the spirit speaking vows it will never stop until Christine dies. The spirit is then transported into a goat, but San Dena's assistant Milos (Kevin Foster) fails to kill it, becoming possessed himself. The séance ends, and San Dena dies in the process, Rham Jas explains the spirit was only banished until the next day. He seals the cursed button in an envelope and says that she could give it to someone else to become their possession, the curse will then pass to that person. Christine thinks of giving it to Stu as revenge for stealing her job, but meeting him being tearful and pathetic she changes her mind. But the fortune teller says it may be possible to eliminate the curse giving the button to a dead body, so she goes to the grave Mrs. Ganush, as "the soul never dies". Despite a torrential downpour, and the dug up grave flooding, she is successful in shoving the envelope in the corpse's mouth before the dawn. The film ends with Christine happy to have been promoted, following Stu explaining that an important file was stolen and Stu has been fired. She buys herself a new coat in celebration, and Clay is waiting at Los Angeles Union Station ready to propose to her. Surprised by her new coat, Stu reveals finding the envelope and cursed button in the car. Christine is horrified and walks backwards, falling onto the tracks, the ground opens up and she is dragged screaming to the fiery depths of hell. Also starring Bojana Novakovic as Ilenka Ganush. Lohman is a good choice to play the lead victim being tortured mentally and psychologically until the truly savage ending, Long is likeable as the non-believer, and Raver as the disgusting old crone attacking and haunting is a character you love to hate. The story is good and traditional with many elements reminding you of a 1950s scary movie, with great stylish music, inventive camera-work, great moments to disgust, especially the old villain and a fly in the girl's stomach, and a fantastic feeling of unending doom and terror, it a great fun supernatural horror thriller. Very good!