Critical Reception
Drag Me to Hell was acclaimed by critics upon release. Rotten Tomatoes rated the film as "Certified Fresh", with 92% of critics giving the film a positive review, based upon a sample of 227 reviews. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 reviews from mainstream critics, the film has received an average score of 83 out of 100, based on 32 reviews, signifying "universal acclaim".
Positive critical reception of the movie generally praised the film's scary but humorous and campy tone. Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave the film an A rating, stating that "Raimi has made the most crazy, fun, and terrifying horror movie in years." Betsy Sharkey of the Los Angeles Times praised the film, stating that it "should not be dismissed as yet another horror flick just for teens. The filmmakers have given us a 10-story winding staircase of psychological tension that is making very small circles near the end." Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune described the film as a "hellaciously effective B-movie comes with a handy moral tucked inside its scares, laughs and Raimi's specialty, the scare/laugh hybrid." Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times wrote a positive review, stating the film "is a sometimes funny and often startling horror movie. That is what it wants to be, and that is what it is." In a positive review, Variety said of the film: "Scant and barren of subtext, the pic is single-mindedly devoted to pushing the audience's buttons... Still, there's no denying it delivers far more than competing PG-13 thrillers."
Bloody Disgusting gave the film four and a half stars out of five, with the review calling it "quite simply the most PERFECT horror film I've seen in a long, long while... a blast and moved quickly from start to finish is well on its way to becoming an immediate classic." The film was then ranked thirteenth in Bloody Disgusting's list of the 'Top 20 Horror Films of the Decade'.
Kyle Smith of the New York Post thought it was cheesy, with too many "gross-outs", Rex Reed of the New York Observer thought that the plot wasn't believable enough, and Peter Howell of The Toronto Star disliked Lohman's performance and thought it was "just not very funny". The movie was nominated for "Choice Movie: Horror/Thriller" at the 2009 Teen Choice Awards, which the film lost to Friday the 13th (2009). At the 2009 Scream Awards show, Drag Me to Hell won the awards for Best Horror Movie and Best Scream-play.
Reviews have also received the movie as a comedy horror in a more classic Raimi vein. Vic Holtreman of Screenrant claims the film is a long-awaited movie that combines both genres as Army of Darkness had done. Noemi Minaya-Mende of Spinnaker Online likens the movie to "traditional dark comedy horror". A reviewer at UGO Networks says that the movie is very much more a comedy than horror and that this is in keeping with Raimi not having produced a "true horror" film since he began directing.
Read more about this topic: Drag Me To Hell, Reception
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