Drag Me to Hell

10 to 10 horror movie for sure

This is a comedy movie.

Scary!

Nice

“Drag Me To Hell” maintains a very unique honorary status among genre fans, (which is an admittedly dubious one that is constrained by a few odd qualifiers), however it remains the only logical champion for a certain category; that of being the best American Horror film of its decade (2000-2009) with a PG-13 rating by the MPAA.

The first decade of the 21st century was one of the least inspired and quality-averse eras ever in the entire history of American Horror Cinema. The “aughts” as it’s colloquially labeled, was a terrible dry spell for most American movies despite the genre you turned to — dark times indeed. There were occasional moments of relief, (usually coming from reliable Titans like Nolan or Tarantino — as well as the indie filmmakers who are now considered as established creators like the Duplass Brothers or Rian Johnson etc.), but to chance upon a HORROR film worth watching once, much less countless times, that was made in the decade known as the aughts was quite the rare experience.

Now flash back to the middle to late year of 2009; I’m finishing up my final semester of my bachelors degree/college, and I see a trailer for some Horror movie that appears to give you the entire story in a 30 second TV commercial, and then quickly flashes that black credits screen to reveal what was pretty much a kiss of death to Horror movies back then (and if we’re honest, it still is), showing “RATED PG-13” next to the film’s release date...but just below that text is something else that makes your brain do a double take, as nothing is making sense at this moment. “WRITTEN & DIRECTED BY SAM RAIMI.” I recall trying to parse this information, as if the physical laws that define the universe were no longer immutable truths of existence. I raced to the computer. Indeed it wasn’t a mistake or text error. This new film by Raimi was to be rated PG-13, and the early critical response to its press screenings had been overwhelmingly positive. These people weren’t just giving it a favorable nod, they were rejoicing as if the existence of great American Horror movies was no longer on life support, but rather quite promising as the world prepared to enter the 2010s. A new era where we could maybe start to contribute once again to the cache of fantastic Horror films; indeed, the future wasn’t just mindless ripoffs of poorly executed found footage nonsense, nor was it of the torture-porn variety that American filmmakers had shamelessly oversaturated the whole genre as in the “Saw” franchise, (well technically James Wan did use the 2010s spamming the Horror genre with another sort of awful franchise “horror” movie but you get the picture...puninteded).

Drag Me To Hell isn’t good for a PG-13 rated movie. It’s a great movie that you wouldn’t question the rating of if you went in blind and knew nothing about it. (You’d probably guess the director half way through after the second or third scene where projectile vomited blood or maggots directed into the protagonist’s face doesn’t quickly cut away, but rather holds, focuses, or even pushes closer just to make sure you no longer have an appetite...something’s just never cease to be effecting on an audience, and Sam Raimi’s ability to make audiences squirm, shriek, laugh, and gasp all within a minute of footage has been one of his several charming signatures since the iconic Evil Dead/Evil Dead II classics.

A great return to form for Raimi. This movie has it all to get me going: dark as night, a twisted, goofy sense of humor, a great score and some damn effective jump scares. The premise may be silly as hell, but it's solid. It is one entertaining horror flick.

Yeah this one is definitely one of the guilty pleasure movies for me. Is it great? No. Would I recommend it? Probably not. But I'll be damned if it's not fun.

I'm not surprised at how visually pleasing this is coming from Horror director extrordinaire Sam Raimi. What is shocking is how...well shocking this is for PG-13 rated Horror. There are plenty of gross-out moments but not the gore or gratuitous violence that is so prevalent in today's Horror. Frankly I think the "torture porn" that is in fashion today keeps a lot of moviegoers away and something like "Drag Me To Hell" may bring many of them back. PG-13 doesn't stop this from being scary or suspenseful in fact it put me at ease knowing I could share a frightening flick with my family without having to expose them to a butchering. The characters are easy to relate to. They're relatively innocent and friendly people caught in the unfortunate position of having to do their job. And wow! The ending isn't fair at all. It's actually mean as Hell (pun intended).

Entertaining horror film but the end is disappointing. Since despite killing a cat ti try and lift a curse. She wasn’t that bad where she deserved to be cursed or dragged to hell.