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The following FAQ entries may contain spoilers. Only the biggest ones (if any) will be covered with spoiler tags. Spoiler tags have been used sparingly in order to make the page more readable.
For detailed information about the amounts and types of (a) sex and nudity, (b) violence and gore, (c) profanity, (d) alcohol, drugs, and smoking, and (e) frightening and intense scenes in this movie, consult the IMDb Parents Guide for this movie. The Parents Guide for Drag Me to Hell can be found here.
No. Drag Me to Hell is a horror film co-written by Ivan and Sam Raimi (who also directed the movie).
The official website for Drag Me to Hell can be found here.
The plot concerns loan officer Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) and an elderly Gypsy woman named Mrs Ganush (Lorna Raver). Mrs Ganush asks for a third extension on her loan payments due to health problems, and Christine decides to deny the extension. Mrs Ganush subsequently places a curse on Christine, damning her soul to Hell and making her life a living nightmare. Pursued by spirits and a lamia, Christine tries to get the curse removed.
In Greek mythology, Lamia was a Libyan queen who was seduced by Zeus and who bore him several children. In a fit of jealousy, Zeus's wife Hera killed all of Lamia's children. Lamia is usually depicted as a beautiful woman from the waist up but as a snake from the waist down. In her grief over the loss of her children, Lamia took to eating the children of other women and to captivating men in order to suck their blood. The uncapitalized form, lamia (plural lamiae), is often used generally to refer to demons, usually women, who kill human babies and drink men's blood. Alternately, they are sometimes described as vampires or succubi. Lamia was the subject of a narrative poem written by English poet John Keats in 1819, the text of which can be read online here.
Be forewarned that a cat is killed, off-camera, in order to save a human soul. You don't actually see the cat getting killed. Christine learns this is a possibility for saving herself, so she reluctantly takes a large butcher knife and calls out, "Here kitty kitty kitty kitty ..." There's a shot of the house and a snarling cat sound. Next thing we see is her burying something in the backyard that is small, furry, and the same color as the cat. Some viewers may find this scene objectionable. The Lamia spits out the cat's "soul" (looking a lot like its dead body) during the seance, which viewers might also find disturbing. The unrated cut is more graphic, including a shot of Christine stabbing the cat (which itself can't be seen), with copious amounts of blood and gore splashing onto her as she does. The shot of the cat being buried is also more graphic (the knife wounds are visible for a split second before they are obscured by dirt).
Christine decides to end the whole conflict with the Lamia, so she takes the envelope containing the button to Mrs. Ganush's grave and buries it with her. The next morning, she goes to meet Clay (Justin Long) at the train station and he gives her the envelope with the button; it turns out Christine had buried Clay's coin with Mrs. Ganush, which was in a similar envelope. Christine falls backwards onto the train tracks, and as a train speeds toward her, demonic hands burst from the ground and grab her. She screams in terror for help, but Clay is unable to assist because the train is still passing overhead. As she is dragged down into Hell, the skin on her face appears to melt away, and the last time we see her, she has no eyelids or lips, and is still screaming for help as the ground closes above her trapping her within Hell forever. In the last shot of the film, Clay stares in horror from the ground, to the button he is still clutching, back to the ground.
When Christine and Clay were in the car, she had some of his papers on her lap, along with her bag and the envelope with her coat button. Viewers had seen previously that when Clay was given a coin earlier by Christine that he had put the coin in an unmarked envelope and into his bag. When Clay quickly braked, the bag, envelope, and Clay's papers fell to the floor. In the papers that Clay was bringing home with him was the white envelope that had the quarter that Christine gave him. Since Christine couldn't have known that Clay hadn't taken the envelope with the quarter home with him, she simply assumed that what she found was the envelope with her button in it.
Upon its release the movie got a PG-13 rating and director Sam Raimi confirmed that this is basically his intended version and that there are no real changes due to the lower rating. On DVD/Blu-ray the movie got released in two versions nonetheless: the well-known theatrical version and the so-called Unrated Director's Cut, both featured on on the same disc. The latter has even a shorter running time than the theatrical version. Despite that several changes can be found mostly due to alternative material resulting from changed f/x and so on. A detailed comparison between both versions with pictures can be found here.
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