Starring: Alison Lohman, Justin Long, Lorna Raver, and Dileep Rao
Written by: Sam Raimi and Ivan Raimi
Directed by: Sam Raimi
Release Date: March 15, 2009
Production Companies: Universal Pictures, Ghost House Pictures, Buckaroo Entertainment, Mandate Pictures, and Tippett Studio
Boy, talk aboout a movie to which I was looking forward. I mean we've got Sam Raimi, a cute blonde, demons, and Hell. What's the worst that could happen?
Unfortunately, Drag Me to Hell seems to hit every possible downfall and turned out to be a great disappointment. 
Throughout all this and after, Raimi's main goal seems to be to gross us out as Ganush is a physically revolting character and the Lamia's main form of attack seems to be nauseating rather than frightening. Plenty of films have been successes with predominantly gross out effects being the big draw, but Drag Me to Hell doesn't try to do anything new or unexpected.
The actors are not compelling either. Lohman seems more embarrassed than fearful. You almost expect her to say, "Oh, sorry about that. You know, Lamias these days, what can you do..." Justin Long, playing boyfriend Clay, has little chance to do anything with a character who is painfully dull, and the fact that he works in a university psychology department isn't even used. Dileep Rao as the seer Ram Jas is actually fairly competant in his role, but the writing doesn't seem to allow his character to actually react to anything.
I know Raimi likes to inject humor into his movies, but it wasn't working here. A guy being possessed by the Lamia does a Lord of the Dance jig or something was eye-rollingly out of place. In The Evil Dead
, Raimi also lightened up his horror with humor, but it fit better there, or maybe Bruce Campbell was better able to convey the humor. In Drag Me to Hell, the humor just makes the scenes seen awkward.Then there's the Lamia, described in the movie as a demon with the head and feet of a goat. But in mythology, Lamia was a Queen driven mad when Hera killed the children Lamia had bore from her trysts with Zeus. The murder of her children drove her mad and she began eating children across the land. Later the lamia became a sort of succubus seducing men and eating them. Nowhere does the lamia get described as having a goat-like appearance. Admittedly, if the movie was good, I wouldn't care, but considering the poor nature of the film, the random distortion of the Lamia when there are goat headed demons he could have used with minor tweaks, such as Baphomet.
Unfortunately, Raimi's return to horror didn't just drag Christine to Hell, but me along with her.
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