It's a drag alright.

Rating: 4/10 (16 January 2012)

Sam Raimi's career has been mainly downs, in terms of box office takings at least. His only highs have been the Spider-Man movies (which I hated) while some of his better work (Darkman, The Quick and the Dead) only managed to gain a cult following. He emerged in the 80s as a surrealist horror director but over the years he's lost whatever edge he had and Drag Me To Hell is proof of that.
The oh-so-cute Alison Lohman (who I would drag to bed) plays a timid bank clerk who offends a decrepit Gypsy woman (a pastiche of former Raimi monsters) and is promptly cursed. In three days the not-scary-sounding demon The Lamia will drag her to hell, but not before having fun frightening her first.
The majority of the scares in the film are, I am sorry to say, overly telegraphed Stingers. Is this what Raimi is reduced to? The PG-13 rating means that this obviously isn't going to be hardcore, but it feels like it was written by a 15-year-old boy and directed by someone referencing the Big Book of Horror Clichés whenever they got stuck. The young Sam Raimi would have been appalled. When limited by the narrow parameters of being a PG-13 Raimi resorts to gross-out moments, mainly involving puking corpses, fake CGI blood, old woman saliva, more unconvincing CGI, and more old woman saliva. This is bottom-of-the-barrel stuff. It's like Spielberg selling Bruce the Shark on having bad breath.
Justin Long provides some decent support, though this film really does belong to Lohman. Her large brown eyes, innocent expressions, and naive demeanor make for a sympathetic character. I just wish she used more logic and common sense. There is a nice twist-in-the-tale which turns it into a Tales From the Crypt-style morality play, but other than that this is pure pot-boiling, pedestrian, Hollywood twaddle with NONE of the grit, rawness or edge of Evil Dead or Within the Woods.