Review of Drag Me to Hell (2009) by Honestabby — 25 Sep 2010

I will give this movie and the positive reviews the benefit of the doubt and assume it was much better in theatres. However, I watched it on HBO and it was frustratingly bad. The dialogue was superficial, seemingly written just to string together the story in between the screaming and supernatural events throughout. From the moment the the old women appears on screen in that trying-too-hard-to-be-creepy garb, I predicted that she was going to curse the main character. Everything that happens to the main character after that is just confusing and random. Many of the disturbances that plague the main character are, of course, not pleasant, you would not want them to happen to you. BUT finding a scarf in your throat and having to pull it out is not that terrifying. This and many other similar things happen just as fillers.

The pace is ridiculous. The beginning is slow and drawn out yet it fails to establish an eerie vibe or build any suspense. When the random disturbances really start, they are almost non-stop until right before the ending. It is such overkill.

The CGI effects are too cheap and unrealistic to be scary but not obviously cheesy enough to be funny. Whether it was meant to be funny/ cheesy or realistic/ scary, it did not look intentional. The girl is being taunted by a cartoon shadow. Seriously.

The characters were total idiots with no substance. There is some random back story for the main character thrown in, more as a side note, toward the middle of the movie but it is irrelevant because that information is never really brought up again. She goes from young soft-spoken girl in business attire to flighty and confused to screeching one liners like "That's yours **** and I don't believe any of it. The boyfriend character is just there to react to the girl's changing behavior by brushing it off until he finally sees something himself and is proven wrong. Again, very original. I could go on and on. Seriously, it was insulting.