Drag Me to Hell

After a huge chunk ofhis career slaving away to make the Spider-Man franchise the single most successful comic book crossover in history, director Sam Raimi has returned to his first love – horror movies – with the adrenaline-fueled thrill ride, Drag Me to Hell. The film stars Alison Lohman as Christine Brown, a loan officer at a small bank who dreams of being promoted to assistant manager so she can prove herself worthy of her successful psychologist boyfriend Clay (Justin Long) and his snobby family. To make her dream a reality, Christine starts being a hard-ass at work, but when she rejects the heartfelt pleas of an old woman to get a loan extension, she discovers it’s a lot better to be nice than be successful. The woman, played with great theatricality by Lorna Raver, turns out to be a gypsy who puts a curse on Christine that the devil will come to her in three days and take her soul to hell. Literally. Raimi is a master at blending horror and humor and he gleefully pulls out all the stops to make Drag Me to Hell as funny as it is frightening. Some of his humor is subtle, some of it is slapstick and some of it is little more than a cinematic release valve to keep you from screaming out loud, and all of it is done with style. Of course, as anybody who has seen his horror classics Evil Dead or Evil Dead II will tell you, Raimi’s not above using buckets of blood – or other bodily secretions – to up the gross-out factor in the film, but even when he’s trying to make you gag it’s done with a sense of humor: Sick humor, true, but humor nevertheless.