Review of Drag Me to Hell (2009) by Jonny P — 25 Oct 2012

Pauline Kael once wrote, "Movies today are so rarely great art that if you cannot appreciate great trash, there is very little reason to go." Well, Drag Me To Hell is probably some of the greatest trash to hit the theaters in a long, long time.

This is some truly goofy fun. Or maybe it's some truly fun goofiness. I'm not sure which. It distinctly reminds me of my old days in college when me and my roommate, dreaming of film school, would get drunk and make an improvised movie with our video camera and the basic concept would pretty much always be that some random object in the house became possessed and started trying to kill me. And I mean that in the best way possible. This movie is filled with the mischievous glee of a little kid playing with his GI Joe figures.

However, I can understand why the movie opened below expectations and seems to be getting mixed word of mouth. Horror movie audiences these days are more trained to expect unrelentingly serious and disgusting torture porn a la Hostel or Saw. And even the horror movies that aren't going for the full-on gory gross-out seem to at least be serious about trying to scare us. And it's not that Drag Me to Hell isn't trying to scare us. It is. But it doesn't have any illusions that it's anything but silly. And it remembers a time when silly and scary were not mutually exclusive things. So the experience is much lighter. It allows you to jump at the ridiculously, unnecessarily loud musical score, and then roll your eyes in an embarrassed admission that, yeah, ok, they got you on that one.

Story elements here are not particularly important, but those of us that are long-time horror movie fans will be pleased by the smartly constructed amalgamation of older, classic horror movie styles. The structure of the story follows most of the major points of The Exorcist, except done over this time with exploitative flair. And the use of shadows in particular in the first half of the movie is beautifully reminiscent of the black and white days of horror, going all the way back to the silent days when the filmmakers would go so far as to even paint shadows onto the sets in movies like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Nosferatu.

I think the big question for fans here, though, is whether or not this is as good as Evil Dead 2. And the answer to that is no. Evil Dead 2 is a masterwork of excess, Drag Me To Hell is a fun throwback to it. It's odd to say, but Drag Me To Hell is more restrained than Evil Dead 2. But anyone that's seen Evil Dead 2 knows that's not really saying much.