Granted, Drag Me to Hell kind of screwed itself over with its trailer:īy marketing itself as a pure horror movie, the movie had already firmly cemented the expectations for anyone walking into it. I realized something: no one knew that they were watching comedies. People would return it (and the other movies listed in the above paragraph) and tell me how stupid each one is and that they weren’t scary at all. While working at Blockbuster, I loved to recommend Drag Me to Hell to customers, but I quickly learned that I had to recommend it with a bit of a precursor. With the exception of Sorority Row, all of those movies received very good reviews (I still love Sorority Row, but that’s a discussion for another post), with Drag Me to Hell scoring the best reviews at 216 positive and 19 negative, for a 92% positive score on Rotten Tomatoes.Īlright, enough of the history lesson. Out of that list, the films that seem to have the lowest standing in the mainstream are Slither, Piranha 3D, Sorority Row and Drag Me To Hell. Obviously, your enjoyment of any of these movies depends on your sense of humor, but I have to tell you that they are all in the same genre. Some of these are very obviously comedies with elements of horror ( Shaun of the Dead, Ghostbusters, This is the End) and others are horror movies with elements of comedy ( Misery, Gremlins, Fright Night). Take this list of movies and think about any of them that you like (although if you are reading this post you probably actually do like most of them): There was the occasional film that everyone loved and thought was hilarious ( Shaun of the Dead, Zombieland) but for the most part, they just weren’t anyone’s cup of tea. Horror comedies were definitely on the “dislike” list. Years ago, when I was a junior in college working at Blockbuster (yes, Blockbuster), I got a lot of insight as to what kinds of movies people my age liked and what they didn’t. Since I fell in love with the sub-genre when I saw Critters (a hilarious ’80s creature feature that is essentially a rip-off of Gremlins) as a child, I have always tried to watch all of the horror comedies that came out (many of the ones that released nowadays see rave reviews but also very low box office numbers). There are even horror buffs like myself, who swear by director Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead trilogy, who hate Drag Me to Hell.
That is why it really bums me out that more people don’t like Drag Me to Hell. Any movie from Evil Dead 2 all the way to the more recent Cabin in the Woods holds a special place in my heart.