Hell, yeah!

Rating: 9/10 (2 July 2009)

The first thought that comes to mind upon seeing Drag Me to Hell is "there's no place like home". For Sam Raimi, "home" means the edgy, subversive horror movies that kick-started his career, a genre he returns to after a two-decade break (The Gift is actually a regular thriller with a few supernatural elements) for two reasons: a) he needed a pause for breathing after three consecutive Spider-Man movies (and a fourth one planned for 2011), the last of which received mixed reviews to say the least; b) who better than him to prove that his production company Ghost House Pictures is capable of making scary films and not just miscalculated efforts like The Grudge and Boogeyman?
The picture tells the story of Christine Brown (Alison Lohman), an ambitious girl who handles loans in a bank hoping she will soon get a richly deserved - in her opinion, that is - promotion. In order for that to happen, though, she needs to be able to deal with tough decisions, her boss (David Paymer) tells her. And so the young girl refuses to grant Mrs. Sylvia Ganush (Lorna Raver) a third extension on her mortgage, since doing the opposite would be a career-damaging move. Unfortunately, the old lady - who happens to be a gypsy - isn't very forgiving, in fact she assaults Christine in a parking lot and subsequently lays a terrible curse upon her: after three days, the Lamia (a goat-demon) will take her to Hell for all eternity. With her boyfriend (Justin Long) suspecting she might be losing her mind and demon "experts" (Dileep Rao and Adriana Barraza) largely clueless as to what should be done, Christine only has 72 hours to come up with a way to save her soul.
Although it was completely unintentional (Raimi says he and his brother Ivan wrote the script in the early '90s), Drag Me to Hell stands out as a very relevant movie in these financially unstable times: whereas blockbusters like The International depict banks as the Big Bad with less than thrilling results, this film revives that satirical streak which defined several great horror flicks in the '60s and '70s (Romero's zombie cycle being the obvious quality example) and has been conspicuously missing lately (barring Joe Dante's Iraq-related episode of Masters of Horror, which, appropriately enough, featured zombies). From the get-go, Raimi has us all hooked on one point: at present, it's a lot of fun to watch a banker get in all kinds of trouble.
Then again, Raimi doesn't really care about politics or social subtext; what he wants to do is scare people as much as possible. That he manages to do so despite the obvious limitations of the PG-13 rating (The Evil Dead, his feature debut, was originally banned in several countries for its OTT violence) speaks volumes about his deep understanding of the genre, and also unveils a long lost truth: you don't need gallons of blood and torture - the current trend in horror productions - to make a good scary picture, as long as you have an intriguing premise, a spooky mood and the right jump-in-your-seat set-pieces. Naturally, this being a Sam Raimi film, the horror comes with a peculiar mix of absurd, revolting humor, and the director succeeds in eliciting shocks and laughs in equal measure from a random series of objects, including a handkerchief (!) and a piece of cake.
If one wants to complain, it could be pointed out that some minor characters - notably Reggie Lee's opportunistic bank employee - are blatantly two-dimensional, and the dialogue is occasionally corny even by B-movie standards ("And after the third day, the demon will come to take you.", says a psychic, to which Christine replies: "Take me where?"). But hey, this is, at heart, a B-movie, so any narrative "misstep" (such as the deliberately stereotypical depiction of the gypsies) is easily forgiven. Besides, who watches this kind of movie for the story or the supporting characters? What matters here is Christine and her horrific conflict with an elderly nemesis. Lohman is terrific, suffering all forms of physical abuse while still retaining the necessary charisma to make us care for her fate, in pure Bruce Campbell fashion (Raimi's favorite collaborator was, unfortunately, unable to appear in the movie), and Raver is one of the best horror creations of the decade, doing her best with a role that essentially requires her to scream, spit, drool or vomit.
Long story short: Drag Me to Hell may be bloodless, but it's a visceral, relentless, inventive fright-fest, complete with a straightforward title (it does exactly what it says on the tin). If there has to be a message, make it the following: Spider-Sam's still got it.