Drag Me to Hell: Movie Review (2009)

Directed by Sam Raimi, written by Raimi and Ivan Raimi, 96 minutes, rated PG-13.

Apparently, the foreclosure crisis is far worse than anyone imagined. According to Sam Raimi’s “Drag Me to Hell,” Satan is involved, which poor Christine (Alison Lohman), a loan officer in California, learns at the start in a series of events that go horribly (and hilariously) wrong.

Raimi co-wrote the script with his brother, Ivan, and what they created is a return to form for the director, who in some circles is best known for his “Spider-Man” movies than he is for his early cult films, including such camp horror classics as “The Evil Dead” series, “Army of Darkness” and the lesser-known “Within the Woods.”

Raimi also directed 1998’s terrific “A Simple Plan,” 1990’s “Darkman,” and 2000’s supernatural thriller “The Gift,” all of which get to the breadth of what he’s capable of achieving onscreen. Sure, a few stinkers litter his backyard (“For Love of the Game,” anyone?), but when Raimi directs, it’s mostly good.

“Drag Me to Hell” is a case in point. Armed with a delicious sense of humor, the movie had the audience at my screening either howling or cringing in ways that I haven’t seen in a horror movie in years. Watching the film is almost enough to erase the memory of slogging through all of those rotten “Saw” movies, their bloody knock-offs and the glut of Japanese horror remakes whose entrails we’ve been wading through since “The Grudge” (which Raimi produced) hit the scene in 2004.

What we get in “Drag Me to Hell” is a horror tale told well.

Sweet-natured Christine is jonesing for a job promotion. Faced with some pretty stiff competition in a vicious co-worker, she decides to delight her boss by turning down an elderly woman (Lorna Raver) who no longer can afford the payments on her house. Though Christine could give the woman a final extension, she wants this promotion so badly, she declines. At once hurt and infuriated, the woman falls to her knees, glares at Christine with her bum eye, waves some hoodoo her way, and puts a curse on Christine that wreaks havoc on her life over the next three days.

With Justin Long as her bewildered boyfriend Clay, Christine is forced to battle a bevy of Beelzebub beasties, all of which want to steal her soul away into a crypt of firey rottenness. How will she fight back? That would involve this vegetarian slaughtering small animals, her participation in ground-shaking séances, and a whole host of other unmentionables that often are played as much for laughs as they are for horror.

This is a movie about backbone, and if Christine is going to keep her soul, she’s going to have to find hers, usually while caked in mud or some other form of goo. What ensues is a solid horror movie that features such big laughs, you come away wishing that most comedies were consistently as funny and as bright.

Grade: B+

View the trailer for "Drag Me to Hell" here: