What a disappointment

Rating: Null/10 (2 June 2009)

A Lamia is a Greek fairy-tale demon who murders children and originally was the daughter of the gods Poseidon and Lybie. That has nothing to do with this story, I guess the writer thought it just sounded like a good name. Here it is a goat-head/cloven foot devil who drags peoples souls to hell on the curse of filthy, old gypsy women. What hog wash.
Horror tales confront the times in which they are written and even though the Rami brothers claim to have written this in their Evil Dead era, it's major themes are all from today's news...
Exposition Scene : Two California (illegal ?) Mexican immigrants bring their young son to a Medium named Shaun San Dena because he has stolen a necklace from a Gypsy woman, and although he tried to return it, the woman refused (More immigrants, but this time terrorists !). The Medium is unsuccessful in removing the curse and the poor child is Dragged to Hell.
Exposition Scene 2: Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) works at a bank and wants to be promoted to the assistant manager position, her boss Mr. Jacks (the underrated David Paymer) knows this and dangles this as a carrot before her face and lets her know that a new employee, Stu Rubin (the terrible actor Reggie Lee) is a real go-getter willing to put in the hours and make the "hard" decisions. The bank scenes don't work and they lack pace and get in the way of the story. The characters are one dimensional and Reggie Lee is just hard to watch as he tries to act.
We meet Christine's boy friend the Apple Computer guy (Justin Long-a truly listless actor) who is a psychology professor named Clay Dalton. This is a good idea, but nothing ever becomes of it in this mess of a movie. There is some antagonism from Dalton's mother and this is answered to later in the film, but is unnecessary to the plot, in fact they could have written out Clay's parents and moved the film along at a more even pace, instead it just drags...
The Set-Up: A Gypsy woman (saw this coming from a mile away) named Mrs. Ganush (Lorna Raver) comes in and has defaulted on her mortgage (another hot topic in the news); she asks for more time. Blah, blah, blah the manager says no and goats Christine to turn the woman down. The Gypsy woman has become more disgusting by the moment, taking her teeth out, yuk ! She begs Christine and is suddenly humiliated when Christine pulls away. Not an effective scene at all.
Mrs. Ganush somehow finds Christine's car and waits for her then acts like a terminator trying to hurt the young woman. I had to really bite my lip not to laugh at this scene, it is so contrived.
The Pay-out: There is none. There are some scenes that have promise like a séance with the former mentioned Shaun San Dena that has a moment or two of scares, but mostly this film is a real yawn fest. I can understand that the young reviewers on this page might like it, they are not as jaded as the more adult viewers. It's not scary, it's not even a great idea as Evil Dead was, it is however a waste of money.
I rate it so low because I expected much more from the Rami brothers. It is the Emperors New Cloth of the Summer Films. My advice, if you must see it, wait for the DVD and hope it has deleted scenes and comments...