Drag Me to Hell Film Synopsis

A young loan officer denies a desperate extension and inherits a Romani curse. With a demon promising three days of torment before damnation, she seeks mediums, sacrifices, and a risky transfer ritual. A final mix-up at a train platform proves fatal when the Black Goat returns to claim its debt.

A Child’s Doom

Pasadena, 1969. A Hispanic couple arrives at the home of Shaun San Dena, a young medium whose reputation for contacting the supernatural has spread through their community. Their desperation is evident as they explain their son Juan’s terrifying predicament. The boy has been hearing malevolent voices ever since he took a silver necklace from a Romani woman’s wagon. Juan tried to return the stolen item, hoping to undo his mistake, but the damage was already done. The voices persist, growing more threatening with each passing day.

San Dena agrees to help and prepares a séance in her dimly lit parlor. Candles flicker as she attempts to make contact with the force tormenting the child. The atmosphere grows heavy and oppressive as the ritual progresses. Without warning, an invisible entity attacks everyone in the room. Juan is seized by an unseen power that lifts him into the air despite his parents’ desperate attempts to hold onto him. The boy’s screams echo through the house as he is violently dragged away, pulled downward through reality itself into the depths of Hell. San Dena watches helplessly as the child vanishes, his fate sealed. She makes a solemn vow that day: she will confront this demon again and fight it, no matter how long she must wait.

The Promotion

Four decades pass. Los Angeles in the present day bustles with the energy of a modern city, far removed from the quiet Pasadena neighborhood where Juan met his fate. Christine Brown works as a loan officer at a bank, processing applications and managing accounts with professional efficiency. Her career has reached a critical juncture—a promotion to assistant branch manager has become available, and Christine finds herself competing directly with her co-worker Stu Rubin for the position.

Jim Jacks, their boss and the current branch manager, calls Christine into his office for advice. He explains that the decision between her and Stu will come down to who demonstrates superior judgment and the ability to make difficult choices. Jacks wants to see toughness, the willingness to enforce bank policy even when it requires hardness. Christine understands what he is asking: she needs to prove she can prioritize the bank’s interests over her natural compassion.

The opportunity to demonstrate this resolve arrives in the form of Sylvia Ganush, an elderly Romani woman who enters the bank seeking help. Sylvia’s appearance immediately sets her apart from typical customers—her clothes are disheveled, her hygiene poor, and her demeanor carries an air of desperation that makes other patrons uncomfortable. She approaches Christine’s desk with a request that has been made twice before: she needs a third extension on her mortgage payment.

Sylvia explains her circumstances with increasing urgency. An illness has devastated her finances, leaving her unable to work and draining what little savings she possessed. The economic consequences have spiraled beyond her control, and now she faces the imminent repossession of her home. She pleads with Christine to grant one more extension, just enough time to recover and arrange payment. Her desperation is genuine and painful to witness.

Christine hesitates, torn between her natural empathy and the advice Jacks gave her mere hours earlier. She knows that approving the extension would be the compassionate choice, the decision that aligns with her personal values. But she also knows that Jacks is watching, evaluating her performance and comparing her to Stu. Against her better judgment and the voice of her conscience, Christine denies the request. The decision is final—Sylvia’s house will be repossessed.

Sylvia’s reaction shifts from pleading to fury. She begins to beg more frantically, her dignity crumbling as she realizes Christine will not relent. Security guards are called to escort her from the premises. As they take her arms and guide her toward the exit, Sylvia turns back to hurl accusations at Christine. She shouts that Christine has publicly shamed her, humiliated her in front of strangers, stripped away her dignity along with her home. The entire bank falls silent as the elderly woman is removed, her curses echoing off the marble floors.

The Curse

Later that evening, Christine walks through the parking garage toward her car, relieved that the difficult day is finally over. The concrete structure is nearly empty, her footsteps echoing in the cavernous space. She does not notice the figure waiting in the shadows until Sylvia lunges at her from between parked vehicles.

What follows is a brutal physical confrontation between the young loan officer and the elderly woman. Despite her age, Sylvia fights with shocking strength and ferocity. They grapple across the hood of Christine’s car, pulling hair and clawing at each other. Christine tries to defend herself without seriously harming the older woman, but Sylvia has no such reservations. She fights like someone with nothing left to lose.

During the struggle, Sylvia’s gnarled fingers find one of the buttons on Christine’s coat. She tears it free with a violent yank, breaking the thread and clutching the small object in her fist. Sylvia mutters words in Romani, ancient phrases that Christine cannot understand but instinctively fears. The old woman presses the button against her lips and whispers into it, infusing the ordinary object with something dark and terrible.

Then Sylvia returns the button to Christine, pressing it into her palm. Her voice drops to a whisper as she delivers a warning: Christine will soon come begging to her, crawling back in desperation for help that Sylvia will not provide. The old woman releases Christine and disappears into the shadows, leaving the shaken loan officer alone in the garage clutching the cursed button.

The Haunting Begins

Christine attempts to return to normal life, but the universe has fundamentally changed around her. Her boyfriend Clay Dalton, a college professor, notices her distress and suggests they visit Rham Jas, a fortune teller whose services Clay views with academic skepticism but agrees to humor Christine’s concerns. Jas examines Christine carefully, his expression growing grave as he perceives something attached to her that others cannot see. He explains that a dark spirit has latched onto her, drawn by the curse Sylvia placed on the button.

That night, Christine experiences her first direct attack. The entity manifests in her home, an invisible force that slams doors, hurls objects, and physically assaults her. Christine is thrown across rooms, pinned against walls, and tormented by a presence that delights in her terror. The attacks leave no physical evidence that anyone else can see—no broken furniture, no signs of struggle—making her suffering invisible to witnesses.

At work the next day, Christine tries to maintain professional composure despite her exhaustion and fear. She sits at her desk processing paperwork when her nose begins to bleed. A few drops at first, then a violent hemorrhage that sprays across documents and computer keyboard. Colleagues rush to help her, but Christine is barely aware of their presence. She sees Sylvia Ganush standing among the cubicles, the old woman’s face twisted in triumph and malice. The vision is so vivid that Christine screams, only to have the apparition vanish as suddenly as it appeared. When she looks down, she notices something disturbing: Stu Rubin is quietly removing a file folder from her desk, slipping it into his briefcase when he thinks no one is watching.

Seeking Forgiveness

Christine decides that the only way to end the curse is to apologize directly to Sylvia and beg her forgiveness. She obtains the old woman’s address and drives to the Ganush residence, rehearsing what she will say. When she arrives, Sylvia’s granddaughter Ilenka answers the door. Christine begins to explain the purpose of her visit, but Ilenka interrupts with devastating news: Sylvia died recently, passing away before Christine could make amends.

Ilenka mentions that the funeral is happening that very day. Christine, desperate and not thinking clearly, decides to attend and perhaps pay her respects to the deceased woman, hoping this might somehow appease whatever force Sylvia set in motion. She arrives at the funeral home where mourners have gathered to honor Sylvia’s memory.

Christine’s presence immediately causes disruption. The mourners recognize her—word has spread through the community about the bank officer who denied Sylvia’s final plea and set in motion the chain of events leading to her death. Christine’s attempts to blend in and quietly pay respects fail spectacularly as she inadvertently causes a scene, drawing hostile stares and whispered condemnations. Ilenka approaches her and delivers a cold assessment: Christine deserves whatever fate awaits her. The curse will run its course, and no one present will lift a finger to help her.

The Lamia’s Nature

Rham Jas contacts Christine with information he has uncovered through research and consultation with ancient texts. The curse afflicting her has a name and a history. She has been marked by the Lamia, sometimes called the Black Goat, an ancient demon of terrible power. The Lamia’s pattern is always the same: it torments its victim for exactly three days, inflicting psychological and physical suffering that escalates with each passing hour. On the third day, when the victim has been broken by fear and exhaustion, the demon literally drags them into Hell.

Jas suggests a possible solution: an appeasatory sacrifice might satisfy the demon’s hunger and break the curse. Christine is horrified by the suggestion but sees no alternative. That night, with tears streaming down her face and her hands shaking, she takes her pet kitten and kills it, offering the innocent animal’s life in place of her own. The act destroys something inside her, a violation of her own moral code that she can never undo.

The next trial arrives when Christine must meet Clay’s parents for the first time. Trudy and Leonard Dalton are wealthy, cultured people who live in a mansion and move in social circles far removed from Christine’s middle-class background. The dinner is meant to be Christine’s opportunity to make a good impression and demonstrate that she is worthy of their son. Instead, it becomes a nightmare.

Throughout the meal, Christine suffers grotesque hallucinations. The food on her plate writhes and moves. The faces of Clay’s parents distort into monstrous visages. She hears whispers and sees shadows that no one else perceives. Christine struggles to maintain conversation and proper etiquette while her reality fractures around her, the Lamia’s torment continuing even in this inappropriate setting.

The Séance

Rham Jas offers Christine one final option, though it will cost her dearly. For ten thousand dollars, he can arrange a meeting with Shaun San Dena, the medium who encountered the Lamia forty years earlier and has been preparing for another confrontation ever since. Christine does not have that kind of money, but Clay, seeing her desperation and genuinely fearing for her life, pays the fee on her behalf.

San Dena greets them with the calm of someone who has been expecting this moment for decades. She reveals that her encounter with the demon as a young woman has haunted her ever since, and she has spent forty years studying the Lamia, learning its weaknesses, and preparing for the day when it would surface again. Now, finally, she has the opportunity for vengeance against the entity that took young Juan from his parents.

San Dena and her assistant prepare an elaborate séance designed not merely to contact the Lamia but to trap and destroy it. They bring a live goat into the ritual space—the plan is to lure the demon into possessing the animal, then kill the goat while the Lamia is vulnerable, thus destroying the demon permanently. Candles are lit, protective symbols are drawn, and the ritual begins.

The Lamia responds with fury to this challenge. Rather than docilely entering the goat as planned, the demon attacks everyone present simultaneously. San Dena’s body convulses as the entity possesses her, forcing the elderly medium to speak in voices not her own. The goat begins to thrash and bleat in supernatural terror. The assistant is seized by the demon’s power and begins to vomit—not ordinary sickness but the regurgitation of Christine’s deceased kitten, the cat’s corpse emerging from her throat impossibly whole.

The room descends into chaos as San Dena fights the possession from within, using every technique she has mastered over forty years of preparation. Her struggle is internal and external simultaneously, a battle of wills between human determination and demonic power. Through sheer force of will and the strength of her preparation, San Dena succeeds in banishing the Lamia, driving it from her body and back into whatever dimension it normally inhabits.

The victory comes at a cost. San Dena collapses as the demon departs, her body unable to withstand the strain of hosting such malevolent power. She dies shortly after the banishment, having achieved her four-decade quest for vengeance but paying the ultimate price.

The Transfer

Before dying, San Dena provided Jas with crucial information about the curse’s mechanics. The Lamia is bound to the button, the physical object through which Sylvia channeled the curse. The demon cannot be destroyed—San Dena’s banishment was only temporary—but the curse can be transferred. If Christine gives the button to someone else, the Lamia will pursue that person instead, releasing Christine from her doom.

Jas seals the button inside an envelope and explains the terrible choice Christine now faces. She can save herself by condemning someone else to the exact fate she has been enduring. All she needs to do is give the envelope to another person, and the curse will transfer to them automatically.

Christine wrestles with this moral dilemma at a twenty-four-hour diner, staring at the envelope on the table before her. She thinks about Stu Rubin, the coworker who stole her file in an attempt to sabotage her chances at the promotion. He betrayed her professionally, risking her career for his own advancement. Doesn’t such treachery deserve consequences?

She calls Stu and demands he meet her at the diner immediately. She accuses him of the theft and tells him she knows what he did. Stu arrives defensive and hostile, but when he realizes Christine has proof of his actions, his demeanor crumbles. He begs her not to report him to Jacks, explaining his own desperation and financial pressures. He admits his wrongdoing and throws himself on her mercy.

Christine looks at Stu’s terrified face and sees a mirror of her own fear and desperation from the past three days. Despite everything he has done, she cannot bring herself to condemn him to the Lamia. She cannot become the person who inflicts this curse on another human being, no matter how much they might deserve punishment.

The Grave

Christine contacts Jas with a new plan. If the curse can be given to another person, perhaps it can be given to someone who is already dead. Sylvia Ganush is beyond the Lamia’s reach now, already claimed by natural death. If Christine can formally offer the curse back to Sylvia’s corpse, the demon will have no valid target and the curse should break.

Late at night, Christine travels to the cemetery where Sylvia was recently buried. She brings a shovel and begins the grim work of exhumation, digging through soil still soft from the recent interment. The work is exhausting and horrifying, each shovelful bringing her closer to the woman whose death she inadvertently caused.

The weather turns against her as she digs. Rain begins to fall, first as a drizzle and then as a massive downpour that turns the grave into a muddy pit. Christine slips and slides in the muck, nearly losing her footing multiple times. When she finally reaches the coffin and pries it open, she confronts Sylvia’s corpse, the old woman’s face frozen in death.

Christine forces the sealed envelope containing the cursed button into Sylvia’s mouth, completing the transfer. The curse now belongs to the dead woman who created it. But the grave has become treacherous with rain and mud. The walls begin to collapse, soil sliding down to bury Christine alive. She claws desperately at the slick earth, struggling to climb out as the pit threatens to become her tomb. Through sheer determination and panic-fueled strength, she manages to pull herself over the edge and escape, covered in mud and traumatized but alive.

Union Station

Christine returns home to clean up and prepare for what should be a happy occasion. Clay has asked her to meet him at Union Station for a surprise. She suspects a romantic gesture, perhaps even a proposal, and allows herself to feel hope for the first time in days. The curse has been broken, the nightmare is over, and she can finally move forward with her life.

While she prepares, her phone rings. Jim Jacks calls with professional news: she has received the promotion to assistant branch manager. Stu Rubin has been dismissed from the bank after an investigation confirmed he stole Christine’s file. Everything is falling into place—her career is advancing, her relationship with Clay is growing serious, and the supernatural threat has been neutralized.

Christine arrives at Union Station to find Clay waiting for her on the platform. His expression carries nervous excitement as he greets her with a kiss. He mentions that he found something in his car and hands her an envelope, asking if it belongs to her.

Christine opens the envelope and her entire world stops. Inside is the cursed button from her coat. She stares at it in confusion that rapidly transforms into horror as the terrible truth becomes clear. Earlier, she had given Clay a rare coin in a similar envelope as a gift. When she went to the cemetery, she grabbed what she thought was the envelope containing the cursed button. She was wrong. She buried the coin in Sylvia’s mouth and kept the button, the curse never broken, the Lamia still coming for her.

The realization hits her like a physical blow. The three days have passed. The demon’s patience is exhausted. Christine stumbles backward in shock and horror, her foot slipping off the edge of the platform. She falls onto the train tracks just as a locomotive approaches at high speed, its whistle blaring and brakes screeching.

But the train is not what kills her. Demonic hands burst through the ground beneath the tracks, clawing up from Hell itself. They seize Christine’s legs and arms, dozens of burning hands pulling her downward. She screams and struggles, but the Lamia’s grip is absolute. The platform beneath her cracks open, revealing the fiery caverns of Hell below.

Christine is dragged down into the flames, her screams cut off as she vanishes into the earth. The ground seals itself behind her, leaving no trace of the opening. The train thunders past the now-empty section of track where she stood moments before.

Clay stands on the platform above, watching helplessly as the woman he loves is torn away from him and condemned to eternal torment. Tears stream down his face as he stares at the tracks in shock and disbelief. In his hands, he still holds the cursed button, the object that doomed Christine and now serves as the only physical evidence of what just occurred.