Jun 13 2009
Movie Review - Drag Me To Hell, Can I Get A WTF?
When I heard several different usually reputable sources say that Drag Me To Hell was a pretty good horror movie, I, in my infinite gullibility, took that to mean that it was, how do you say, a pretty good fucking horror movie. That’s how I interpret that particular phrase.
Apparently, the rest of the world has a different working definition of ‘pretty good,’ cuz the shit that I saw made me want to hunt down the Raimis and beat them with Joxer’s colander hat till it stopped being fun.
It would take too long for me to list all the things that were wrong with this movie, so I’ll just give a quick synopsis and then hit the highlights till they puke in your mouth, because apparently, that’s the scariest thing that could ever happen to you ever ever.
Drag Me To Hell, contrary to what the trailers would have you believe, is a shitstorm of a movie centering on a blond girl who pisses off a gypsy and gets cursed.* Why does a gypsy curse her? Because all gypsies ever do is run around cursing people, natch. I don’t know if there’s like a Gypsies For Equal Treatment In Films Association out there or anything, but if I were a gypsy, I’d be pretty pissed off about the way movies portrayed my entire people.
But I digress. Anyway, blond girl gets cursed, and finds out that she has three days before a goat-demon called a Lamia drags her formerly fat ass into hell. However, in those three days, the Lamia will also visit her at home several times to throw her into walls because he’s apparently just a real dick that way, and the now-dead gypsy who cursed her will pop in occasionally to vomit gross things into her mouth. The girl gets a couple of psychics and a random Mexican to hold a seance for her, which doesn’t work, and she dies. The end.
Are we all caught up? Good, here comes the List O’Reasons I Cried “Fuck Me, I Paid Money For This?”
1) Lamia is not a goat god bound to do gypsy bidding. Lamia is actually an ancient Greek myth that has something to do with being a baby-eating witch.** The Greeks had a goat god, but he was more about partying with nymphs and getting drunk than sending people to the underworld. The creature in this movie is actually a lot more like Baphomet, if Baphomet had nothing better to do than chase after bank tellers just because a senile old gypsy told him to.
2) What the hell was with all the mouth nastiness? Every time I stopped snorting into my Dr. Pepper, I’d look up to the screen and there’d be the old gypsy drooling in Blonde Girl’s mouth, or vomiting into it, or puking worms into it, or punching her dirty old gypsy hand into it. Bitch, close your fucking mouth and maybe nasty demon shit would stop getting into it! This girl had vileness in her mouth so many different times throughout the movie, I literally lost count.
3) Why was Justin Long in this flick? I don’t get it. I mean, somebody had to play the skeptical but well-meaning boyfriend and it might as well be someone good-looking, but why was the character even there? So that he could pick up the tab for Miss Cleo’s light show and look sad at the end? Pointless. I thought maybe he’d get invited to the seance and could look scared and probably yell “What the fuck?” a couple times, but no, he wasn’t invited, even though anyone who’s seen even one seance movie can tell you four looks better at the table than three. Which brings me to number four.
4) Who the fuck was the Hispanic dude at the seance? The character literally showed up five seconds before they all sat down to summon Mr. Tumnus. Who was he?! It was like the old psychic said, “Oh, you sent your boyfriend away? But we need four for a seance, everyone knows that! Oh, well. Token Indian Guy, would you go fetch the gardener, he’ll do.” So the gardener comes in and gets possessed (shortly after a goat calls Blonde Girl a whore - I am not making this shit up).
While I did spend the entire movie laughing my ass off at the cheesy effects (OMG, goat feet! Under my door! AHHHHHH!) and repetitive scare tactics (violins, violins, violins, SHIT OLD LADY IS VOMITING RUN OH NO THE DOOR CLOSED BY ITSELF YET AGAIN!!!), I definitely felt dirty for having suggested to my sister that we see this movie. I award it no points and may God have mercy on its soul.
*Incidentally, how does the gypsy curse scale work? Cuz sending a goat demon after someone for refusing them a loan seems pretty harsh. I mean, the dude from Thinner fucking ran over someone and all he got was a tapeworm.
**Was I surprised that Neil Gaiman knew this, but not the Raimi brothers? Not even a little.
LOL I guess it’s a good thing that Travis and I ended up not going to the movies this weekend!
Ooh, have you watched Repo yet????? Well!!!!!
Some other points, the girls gets a bloody nose, and she spews out gallons of blood. Nobody seems to give a f*ck, except that he gets p*ssed of about his shirt and if he got some blood in his mouth, like he couldn`t taste that? I mean, blood has a very distinct taste.
If this is a real example how offices in America work, I am totally not surprised that some people walk into them with a machinegun and kill their coworkers, if they were like that. Nobody even suggested caling 911 for the poor girl who had a blood spewing nose.
And the button coin switch, I mean, I sw that coming a mile away, not
that she let Stu of the hook, and the option to give it back to the gypsy witch I didn`t expect and I liked her nasty attitude in the grave itself.
Wel actually I thought that her boyfriend would get ripped away, but to be honest she didn`t give the button to him, so that woudn`t have worked either.
Not a very scary movie , the sound scared me more then the pictures.
And like you said, the mouth throwing up wasn`t scary, just groose.