Consider yourself dragged

Rating: 1/10 (19 November 2009)

This movie was really a letdown. I got about halfway through and couldn't continue. (That's a policy I've had ever since I forced myself to sit through all of Synecdoche, New York -- if a movie sucks up to half-time, it hasn't earned the right to be watched all the way through.) Let me start by saying that I'm a HUGE fan of Sam Raimi's work in general and the Evil Dead series in particular, which this was supposed to be some kind of homage to. Bottom line: the title is accurate but ironic, since the person being dragged to hell is in fact the viewer, and the hell is not one of horror but of horrifically bad film-making. There was nothing in this movie that I liked. I couldn't care less about the characters. To say the plot made zero sense is to ignore the existence of negative numbers. Even by the low standards of horror movie plots, this movie is ridiculous. Every scene made me say "there is no way that that could have happened, even given the existence of the demons in the movie world". Just for starters: if the old woman is able to control such gigantic, enormous, world-shattering Satanic powers to torture the poor young girl, don't you think she should have been able to use those powers to pay her mortgage? Maybe by robbing a bank or something? The filmmakers must think we're idiots. Also, whatever scares the movie had were of the "BOO!" variety, when something unexpected happens (but which you can anticipate is going to happen due to the oh-so-obvious buildup). This is the lowest form of horror, roughly akin to fart jokes for comedians. And as (I suppose) a way of compensating for the lack of real horror, the movie is full of gross-out scenes, like the old woman vomiting up various things into the young girl's mouth or flies crawling into the girl's nose and mouth (in close-up). I watch horror movies to be scared; if I want to be grossed out I can always watch a Judd Apatow comedy. This movie fails on every conceivable level -- just pray that there isn't a Drag Me To Hell, part 2 (Drag Me Back To Hell? Drag Me To Hell One More Time? I Know Why You Dragged Me To Hell Last Summer? You pick the title. Just avoid this movie.)