Review: Drag Me To Hell

I actually watched this a few days ago. Got my hands on the DVD that is supposed to be released this Tuesday. The DVD (at least the rental version) is very bare bones. Something like a production gallery being the only special feature, which I suppose is due to a desire to get this out before Halloween and such. Or maybe they just hate you.

Also, I've got to say that I'm really not much of a horror fan. Which meant that this wasn't going to be my favorite movie ever. Nonetheless, if given a choice between horror films, I'd much rather take a gross, campy one with a strange oral fixation over anything that's "creepy" or "scary" or whatever the studios would call the crappy Last House On The Lefts of the world. Thankfully, Drag Me To Hell fits firmly into the former category.

What I liked about this was that the main lady (I think her name was Christine) was believable enough that you sort of wanted her to survive... while at the same time deserving the suffering that she goes through. Sure, she's a nice country gal, having to deal with a cutthroat coworker in their quest to get some sort of promotion... and she just happens to get cursed because she denies a bank loan to a crazy lady who has already taken out two loans. At the same time... she could have given the lady the loan and was lying to everyone about her ability to avoid the situation, and then when the lady begs her on her knees, she backs away from her and calls for security. What a jerkoff, right? It was actually kind of fun, surprisingly... not knowing whether or not to cheer for the character to survive or die. In the end I was pleased, to say little about it.

Of course, there's little attention given to the plot (and for good reason). And so there's some awesome scenes involving dead corpses, animals going in and out of the mouth, and a hilarious episode involving a cat(!!!). Of course, some parts dragged a little bit more than others, so the ratio of cool scenes to boring scenes were unfortunately close to even.

I've seen a lot of people complain about the ending, which doesn't make sense to me. Going back to Zombieland (which... as you can see, I saw & wrote about yesterday), the climax of the little cameo we get is COMPLETELY predictable... but it's still awesome because it's such a cool idea. With Drag Me To Hell... you could see the end coming, but it was executed with such a nice punch that I didn't really mind. (I'm trying really hard not to give anything away, for the record.) Everything seems to be certain for our main lady, then BAM! plot twist. BAM! her fortune is reversed. BAM! title card. BAM! movie over.

Basically, it was pretty cool and over the top, so screw unpredictability.