Wear Ear Plugs to this Movie

Rating: 3/10 (30 May 2009)

Here's how to perfectly recreate Drag Me to Hell in your own home. You will need a drum set. Get a friend. Pick a quiet room and take turns sitting with your back to the drums. Have the other friend randomly smash the cymbals and drums every few minutes for an hour and a half. Startled much? Congratulations, you've just watched Drag me To Hell, or at least felt what it was like to sit through it.
For scares, that is quite literally all this movie has to offer. There is absolutely no subtlety to the horror. Instead of taking what could have been a movie with a rich lore and storyline, Sam Raimi chose to make Drag me To Hell into a "jumpfest" that relies on lots of overly loud music and sound effects. Sam, things that are loud are not scary - like jet engines - they are simply obnoxious. And for that matter, rusty gates that are creaking, and annoyed goats do not even have the capacity to be as loud as a jet engine. Did you know that, Sam? Apparently not.
Initially, the PG-13 rating was a red flag for me, but I thought, it's Sam Raimi doing another horror film. I should trust him. Perhaps it's more psychological than anything else. After all, it is about an evil spirit that terrorizes its victim for three days before it takes them to hell. What an opportunity for a smart horror film! Sadly, my trust was misplaced. This movie tries to get some of its scares from gore, but ultimately fails, because it's PG-13 Gore. It's pretty easy to watch and pick out the parts that should have been R, but were obviously toned down to keep a more summer friendly audience in the seats. Too bad, really. Most of the effects end up coming off as fake, and oddly enough, done with CG when they did not need to be. Like when Christine gets dead old lady gunk splattered on her face in the shed. How hard is it to just splatter someone in the face with what looks like dead old lady gunk?
Ultimately it all felt like a rehash of some old concepts from Sam's Bruce Campbell heyday(Christine wrestles with an evil handkerchief much like Ash wrestled with his evil hand). Unfortunately there is no Bruce Campbell to be found, and the handkerchief is done in CG(how hard is it to just hand someone a handkerchief and say, "Wrestle!"). Like everything else in the movie, it just comes off as lame.
And in case you were wondering if the plot is a ripoff of Steven King's "Thinner" - yes. Yes it is.