Welcome back to Movie Recaps.
Today I will show you a supernatural horror film from 2016, titled Drag me to hell.
Spoilers ahead!
Watch out and take care.
In 1969, a family goes searching for a powerful medium Shaun San Dena because they need her
help.
Their son thinks that something awful is coming for him because he stole a silver necklace
from a gypsy wagon.
Shaun quickly realizes what's wrong and takes the boy inside, while the curse that's after
him keeps getting stronger.
It interrupts Shaun's session before she can do anything and drags the boy to hell.
Christine is a small-town girl that has moved into the big city to work as a loan officer
at a bank.
She's a nice and helpful young woman which makes her boss and coworkers think they can
treat her as a pushover.
Her boss is even ready to give the assistant manager position to her co-worker Stu, who's
joined the bank fairly recently, but has shown that he can be very cut-throat in his limited
time there.
Christine is anything but cut-throat, for now.
She has a boyfriend, Clay, who's a professor at a university.
One day, while having lunch together, she can be seen giving him a rare coin she found
at the bank, that he can add to his nerdy coin collection.
As she's leaving his office, Christine stops to drink some water and overhears Clay's conversation
with his elitist mother, who doesn't seem to like or respect her because she was raised
on a farm.
The woman has no problem saying that to her son, but Clay has been dating Christine for
a year and he wants her and his dad to finally meet her at dinner because he loves her.
That day just keeps getting worse for Christine when an old lady comes in the bank to ask
her for another extension on her loan.
Mrs. Ganush has had two extensions on her loan already, but has fallen on hard times
since her illness and would need another one.
Christine goes to talk to her boss to ask him what to do about the matter and he tells
her that it's her decision if she wants to give her another extension or go ahead with
the repossession of the old woman's home.
She's put in a tough spot, knowing that it's a test from her boss to see if she can make
the tough decisions, so she tells Ganush that her request for another extension to her loan
has been denied.
The woman naturally gets very upset and tries pleading with Christine, moreover, she drops
to her knees and begs her for help.
When Christine tries to get away from her and denies her pleas again, the old woman
gets offended thinking that she has shamed her and attacks her.
Security drags Ganush away, but Christine's boss tells her that she has made the right
decision for the interests of the bank.
Later, he's seen giving her the files on an important client that she has found for the
bank.
He implies that she's come at the top of the list for the assistant manager position and
for a brief moment it feels like her luck in life has turned.
But, when she leaves work that night, Christine gets a visit from Ganush in her car.
You shamed me, she says to her, and grabs her hair, whispering curses in her ear.
Christine fights back and they have a long struggle until Christine slams her car into
another one sending the witch flying to the front seat.
The woman doesn't leave it be though and tries to bite her face even though she lost her
fake teeth.
Christine pushes her away and Ganush finally puts her dentures back in, coming to attack
her again when Christine shoves a ruler into her mouth.
She pushes the woman out of the car which only makes her angrier so she breaks her window
and drags her out of the car.
Ganush rips off a button from Christine’s coat, puts a Lamia curse on it, and gives
it back to her.
She tells Christine that it will be she who comes begging her soon.
Later, Clay comes to pick her up from work and when they pass by a fortune teller's shop,
she begs him to go inside.
He doesn't like the idea because he doesn't believe in it but still ends up paying for
the session.
The seer, Rham Jas, takes Christine’s hand and immediately notices her missing button.
He stares off into the ether as strange things occur in his shop, then lifts her hand and
sees the powerful demon that she was cursed with.
That scares him so he tells Christine and Clay to leave with a full refund, but he still
answers her questions about what he saw.
He explains that someone has cursed her.
Clay takes her home, trying to reassure her in the car that Rham Jas is a scam artist
and that she shouldn't be afraid about anything he said to her.
That night, Christine is at home with her kitten when odd things begin to happen in
the house.
It cracks and crunches like somebody is trying to get inside when suddenly all the windows
open, scaring the little kitten too.
Her house looks like it's being possessed and she sees a demonic image in the shadows
that attack her.
Later, Clay comes over to take care of her, but he doesn't believe Christine when she
tells him that it wasn't Ganush who entered her house.
He calls a doctor to have a look at her who says that it's just paranoia from the stress
she experienced that day.
During the night, a fly starts circling Christine as she sleeps and it gets into her mouth waking
her up.
When she lies back down, Ganush is lying next to her.
She attacks Christine again, trying to bite her face-off, the vomits putrid things all
over her.
Christine wakes up from her nightmare next to Clay and tells him that she couldn't wake
up from the nightmare.
Later, Clay takes her to work and tells her not to piss off any old ladies again.
As soon as she's on her desk, Stu comes over and asks her to teach him about some bank
stuff.
When he sits down and she begins explaining the problem to him, his hand transforms into
the old woman's hand, prompting Christine to stand up and tell him to get his hands
off her desk.
Her phone rings and when she answers it, blood begins to drip from her nose and as her boss
comes over to help her, Christine begins to spray vomit blood all over him.
She freaks out and gets out of there fast, leaving ample room for her co-worker to steal
the important client files from her desk.
Christine goes to find the old woman to beg for her help, just as she told her she would.
When she gets to the house, it's not her that answers the door but her granddaughter, saying
that her grandma told her she would come.
She tells Christine that she's not welcome there but after her pleas for help, the granddaughter
lets her come inside.
Christine walks in and the granddaughter shows her where to go to find her when a bunch of
people shoves her into the house, laughing.
They're actually attending Ghanush's wake which Christine learns about the hard way,
falling on top of the dead woman's body.
The table it was on breaks and sends them both falling down, with the body on top of
Christine, leaking something nasty into her mouth.
When a few men grab the body to take it off Christine, it grabs her hair and rips a piece
of it from her head.
Ganush's granddaughter tells her that she deserves everything that is coming to her.
Christine goes to see the seer again who tells her that what plagues her is the Lamia or
the black goat, summoned only to perform the darkest deeds.
For the first 3 days, the Lamia appears as a nasty spirit, tormenting its victim and
after that, it comes for the soul of the owner of the accursed object.
Christine remembers that object to be the button, making Rham Jas step back away from
it, and asking what she should do with it.
He says that as long as she's the owner of the cursed object the Lamia will still come
to take her to hell.
Christine asks how she can get rid of the curse and the seer tells her that she might
try to appease the demon with a sacrifice.
She refuses to do something as vile as that, but still takes the book he offers her.
Rham Jas tells her that when it comes for her, she would be surprised about what she
would be willing to do.
Later, she looks through the book as her kitten meows at her when she suddenly hears the cracks
and crunches of the Lamia in her house once more.
The demon's shadow begins appearing stronger than it did before, hunting her throughout
her house.
Christine goes up the stairs to her room and it follows it there.
She locks herself inside and goes to call Clay, but he doesn't pick up.
Lamia's hooves can be seen in front of the door and Ghanush's face screams at Christine
through her phone screen.
Suddenly, Lamia's shadow begins to change into arms and reaches for Christine when she
escapes its grasp barely.
She tries going out the window, but the demon is there too, scaring the life out of her.
It grabs her and spins her across the room, then flings her into an opposing wall.
Christine is finally broken.
She grabs a knife and calls out to her kitty.
She does the thing she never thought she would, crying as she kills the kitten.
When she finishes burying it in her yard, Clay shows up and notices the blood on her
sweater.
He believes her when she says it's tomato juice.
Nevertheless, he thinks that they should postpone the dinner with his parents they have that
night because of everything that has happened to her lately.
Christine insists that they should still go, convinced that her sacrifice has made all
of her problems with the demon go away.
Christine puts on a nice dress that Clay loves and they go to the dinner happy that it's
all worked out.
Clay introduces Christine to his parents and his mom instantly starts giving the girl grief,
eyeing the cake she's made for them with disgust.
The mom still accepts the cake and takes it to the dining room with the others following
her there.
Their cat Hecuba hisses at Christine, probably sensing what she's done and that she has a
demon on her tail.
Clay's mom doesn't understand how their sweet cat can react to someone like that.
During the dinner, Clay tries to play up Christine's achievements but his mom heckles her regardless.
Christine explains at length what she does as a loan officer, but that still doesn't
impress the woman.
The two of them finally bond when Christine is honest about her family and her mom's problems
with alcohol.
The mom says that her father was also an alcoholic, but unlike Christine, she never dared to admit
it and she respects her for her candor and backbone.
As they begin to talk and laugh over the dinner table, they get served a slice from Christine's
cake and even the mom is glad to try it now.
Suddenly, Christine hears the sounds of the Lamia again somewhere in the vicinity of the
door.
She asks Clay if he heard something as well, but he hasn't.
Christine goes to eat her slice of cake and sees a fly moving inside of it when Ganush's
eye appears in the piece.
She stabs it with a fork and it leaks goo and blood all over the plate.
Christine still pretends that everything is alright even when the cake sucks up her fork.
Then Clay's mom asks her something which she didn't understand and she gives a wrong answer,
prompting Clay to correct her.
When she finally takes a bite from the cake, she chokes on it, then coughs out a fly, disturbing
both parents enough to stop eating her cake.
Suddenly, she starts hearing an unbearable noise and banging on the door so she grabs
a glass and throws it at the door, screaming to be left alone.
Clay calms her down and she says that she wants to leave, storming out of the dining
room.
Clay's mom tells him not to follow her because she's a sick girl.
That night, she goes to the seer again and rampages through his shop, saying that she
did what he told her to do.
Rhan Jas explains that they are dealing with elusive and powerful forces and that there
are no guarantees when it comes to dealing with them.
He says that she must talk to the demon and dissuade it from taking her soul with the
help of someone that he knows.
Christine has a hard time believing him, so he reminds her that Lamia will come for her
after the third day.
He adds that the woman he knows can help her will need to be paid heavily because she would
also be putting herself at great risk from the demon.
Christine asks how much and he tells her that she will need to pay 10 thousand dollars cash,
but the next day.
The following morning, Christine goes to work to talk to her boss about an advance she would
like to get for the assistant manager's position.
However, he informs her that the important deal with the client was canceled and the
bank's branch is going to have serious problems because of it.
To keep it short, she won't be getting the promotion, but if the position becomes available
again then Stu will get it.
Christine leaves work and starts grabbing everything from her house that she can sell.
As she gets certain items from her shed, Ganush's spirit attacks her and shoves its fist down
her throat.
Christine drops an anchor on its head and its eyes splatter all over her face but vanish
when the spirit vanishes.
Later, Christine pawns her stuff, and the man is only willing to give her 3.800 dollars,
unwilling to negotiate.
She takes the money and is aware they're not enough to solve her problem eats some ice
cream and cries.
Clay arrives at her house and tells her that he paid Rham Jas for her even though he doesn't
believe anything.
He says that he knows that she believes it and that he wants to help her however he can
because he wants to take care of her.
Later, Clay drops her off at the mediums house where the seer is already waiting for her.
He introduces her to Shaun San Dena, an experienced medium who's dealt with the Lamia before.
Shaun answers Christine's question about what happened honestly, saying she lost a young
boy's soul to the beast.
She wants to redeem herself and finally defeat it with Christine's help to summon it.
Shaun takes Christine and Rham Jas to her special spiritualist room.
It was built on a location with a particular convergence of energies which allow a doorway
between the world to be opened and let others pass into ours.
The three of them sit at the table and Milosh, Shaun's assistant, brings in a goat to be
a part of the session.
Shaun explains that they have to trap the demon inside the goat when it appears.
Christine will have to place her hand upon the animal and then Milosh will kill the goat
to take care of the demon as well.
They start the session with Shaun saying that they all must be receptive.
Rham Jas tells Christine that she must invite the dead to co-mingle with her spirit and
that when she does, she must believe in it or else it wouldn't work.
She keeps repeating after him "I welcome the dead into my soul".
The session progresses as they speak the words and Shaun sings until she feels the spirits
arrive there.
Now that they've opened the doorway, different spirits appear in the room, but still no Lamia.
Christine sees them in the room until Shaun drives them all away, then says that Lamia
is coming.
They can see and hear its presence in the room.
Suddenly, it possesses Shaun's body and tells them so.
Rham Jas asks it what it desires so it tells them that it desires Christine's soul.
The girl still denies making the tough decision for the loan, but the seer silences her and
talks to the demon asking how they can dissuade it from taking the soul from an insignificant
woman.
Christine gives it her first attempt to place the medium's hand on the goat, but Lamia laughs
at Rham Jas saying no to his pleas.
When she reaches for Christine, she finally puts her hand on the goat transferring the
Lamia there and making it extra angry.
The goat says that she tricked it when Milosh runs over with the knife to kill it.
It bites his hand, retransferring the Lamia into Milosh's body.
When it goes after Christine, Rham Jas tries to banish it, but it just attacks him and
then dances on top of a flaming table.
The seer commands it to leave again but gets another beating.
Finally, Lamia can go after Christine and it tells her that it doesn't accept her cat
as a sacrifice, vomiting it out of its mouth.
Rham Jas wakes Shaun and she finally banishes the spirit out of Milosh and from the room.
Christine thanks her, but the woman has a heart attack and they are forced to call an
ambulance.
The seer tries to save Shaun in the meantime, but she still dies.
Later, as her body is being taken away, Rham Jas tells Christine that Shaun didn't banish
the demon Lamia for good, but just from that session.
He tells her that when the night is through the Lamia will come for the owner of the accursed
object.
The only thing she can do, something he didn't want to tell her before, is to give the object
to someone as a gift.
As Clay is her home, she loses the envelope containing the button in a shuffle of documents,
but looking through them she thinks she found it.
When he drops her off home, Christine tells him to meet her at the station in the morning
so they can go on a vacation.
During the night she torments herself, wondering who she could give the button as a gift to.
At one point, she wants to give it to Stu as well, but when the time comes, she changes
her mind.
Suddenly, she has an idea and goes to consult with Rham Jas again.
Christine asks if she could gift the cursed object to someone that has died and after
a little bit of research, he tells her that she can.
She drives to the cemetery and digs up Ganush's grave, then rips open the wooden casket, revealing
the dead body inside.
Christine first tries to put the envelope inside the body's hand, but she can't do it,
almost like it's still fighting with her.
So, she resorts to opening its mouth with a shovel, making the gift official by stating
it to the heavens, and shoving the envelope down Ganush's throat.
Once all of that is over, she almost drowns in the grave since it has rainwater pooled
inside.
Christine manages to pull herself out of there thinking that she solved her problem.
The following morning, as she's getting ready to meet Clay at the station, her boss leaves
a voice message about Stu.
He says that Stu wanted to steal the important client from Christine and broker a deal with
another bank.
So, in light of that, her boss will be giving her the assistant manager position.
Christine arrives at the station to meet Clay, happy that everything has resolved nicely,
but he suddenly gives her the envelope with the button back.
She mistakenly took the envelope with his coin from the car the previous night.
Christine freaks out and starts pulling back, falling down on the train tracks.