Drag, written and directed by Raviv Ullman and Greg Yagolnitzer, is an inventive, effective, and, at times, startlingly original piece of body horror that exploits the fresh hell of something most of us can occasionally relate to: debilitating back pain. While the film, which recently premiered at SXSW, suffers from some predictability and tonal imbalance, at its best its so original, charming, and dastardly that it gets away with murder.
The setup is simple. A petty burglar (Lizzy Caplan) breaks into a remote mansion, only to throw out her back mid-heist. Suddenly immobilized and in excruciating pain, she’s left stranded and in deep trouble. Fortunately, she had the forethought to bring her curmudgeonly sister (Lucy DeVito) along as a getaway driver, who she calls in as backup (heh). There’s only one way to get out of the house, and that’s by being painfully dragged through it, one brutal and uncomfortably funny mishap at a time.
The film leans hard into the physicality of injury, wringing tension and dark comedy out of every nudge, push, pull and slide. The depiction of back pain is so real and performed so impeccably that it’s quickly revealed as its own, uniquely emotional spin on body horror. Drag knows that you find something inherently upsetting about your body betraying you in real time, and so it exploits that relatable nightmare with a toothy grin. At it’s best, this is mean stuff that pushes the boundaries of emotional discomfort through its extraordinary core performance.
Caplan commits fully to the physical demands of the role, finding an impossibly correct balance between agony and comedy. Her pained noises, strained expressions, and escalating panic sell the film’s central idea at every excruciating turn and/or descending step. With a different lead actor, this could have easily tipped too far into slapstick or stupidity. Instead, Caplan makes it real, allowing the humor to appear organically from the absurdity of the situation—and her audience’s schadenfreude—while never losing sight of her character’s suffering.
Co-star Lucy DeVito is a grounding counterbalance to Caplan’s Bouffon. The push and pull between frustration, obligation, panic, and genuine care is tight, giving Drag its emotional compass as the scenario becomes increasingly bizarre. What makes it all the more compelling is how quickly that bond is tested. The film repeatedly asks a simple but uncomfortable question: at what point does supporting someone toxic, who you love, become unsustainable?
For better or worse, Drag does not limit the body horror to its central injury. While the back pain provides the film’s most inventive and relatable hook, the filmmakers expand outward into more traditional horror territories as things progress. There are sequences here that are genuinely gruesome, with a level of casual yet uncharted physical nastiness that will make even seasoned horror fans wince. It’s unafraid to get mean, and at its best, the movie delivers moments that feel both shocking and uncomfortably plausible.
At the halfway point, things pivot. What begins as a situational horror-comedy starts to take on a darker, more overtly threatening tone. The stakes escalate, the danger becomes less abstract, and the film leans more heavily into its traditional thriller elements. This shift works, for the most part, but it also steers the ship away from what makes the core idea so original, and towards some tonal softening and plot predictability.
In the end, Drag is really a story about selfishness vs. obligation. It’s also an inventive, gnarly, and silly outing that thrives on its central performance and a uniquely painful premise. While it may not fully push itself to the absolute limits of its original concept, it still gets close enough to leave a lasting mark.
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