Welcome back, Sam Raimi.
Once upon a time — before you became Mr. Hollywood Big Shot — you tweaked the nose of the horror genre with the "Evil Dead" trilogy. They were low-budget, high-camp classics with cartoon violence and humor to spare. You went legit with mixed success (the underrated "Darkman" and "
A Simple Plan") and produced goofy TV shows ("Xena" and "Hercules") until the big boys came a-callin' with the "
Spider-Man" franchise. We were happy for you, but missed the old Raimi with the splattery goo and the quick camera zooms and corny jokes.
Sure, you kept your hand in, producing lackluster knock-offs of Japanese horror movies ("The Grudge"), but it just wasn't the same. In your absence, the Eli Roths of the world were flooding the genre with joyless torture porn. Where was the fun? Wither the wit? Thankfully, after long last, you are back in full Raimi effect with "Drag Me to Hell" — a wildly campy, jump-out-of-your-seat, gross-out, laugh out loud Grimm's fairy tale come to life. Oh, how we've missed you...
Playing with a premise as old as the hills — a young woman tormented by a gypsy curse — Raimi has ample opportunity to mess with every corny stereotype and story device. With the appearance of said gypsy — a gnarled old crone with a milky eye, rotten false teeth and blackened talons for nails — he places over-the-top storybook and classic horror archetypes smack dab in the modern world.
As with fairy tales like Snow White, a run-in with a seemingly kindly old lady brings rack and ruin to the beautiful young heroine. In this case, it is Christine (Alison Lohman), an ambitious loan officer who turns down the old woman's request for another extension on her mortgage. To impress her boss, she denies the request in order to show she can make the "tough decisions". Though the gypsy kneels and begs for her to reconsider, Christine stands firm. Shamed and desperate, the gypsy places upon Christine the worst of the gypsy curses: she will be tormented by an evil spirit (known as "the black goat") for three days. On the fourth day, she will be dragged to the fiery pit of hell by demons.
Almost immediately, Christine is plagued with flies, hears voices, gets smacked around her house by destructive spirits and has horrific run-ins with her tormentor. Her psychology professor boyfriend, Clay (Justin Long), chalks up her problems to delusions brought on by post-traumatic stress. Desperate, she seeks advice from a spiritual advisor, Rahm Jas (Dileep Rao), who identifies the curse and suggests ways Christine might rid herself of the menace.
Unfortunately, the spell is not that easy to break. It is a very dark, very powerful curse, requiring Christine to take some extraordinary — and laughably unsavory — means to try and free herself. As an audience, we alternately sympathize with and are horrified by her actions. Lohman, normally a rather dull actress, commits completely to the role as the not-so-perfect princess in this fairy tale. She handles the scream queen duties as well as the comedy with relish. Whether hacking away at a corpse, drenched in embalming fluid or having the worst "dinner with the parents" ever, Lohman brings the audience along with her on this roller coaster ride.
And what a ride it is. Relying heavily on sound design and playing with audience expectations, Raimi brings the scares in unanticipated places, eliciting a chorus of screams — quickly followed by laughs — from the audience. One wishes that he (and his co-writer brother, Ivan) would go for the low-budget project more often. It's been a long time since horror has been this much fun.
