Decent horror with some humour

Rating: 8/10 (4 June 2009)

Anyone who has ever watched horror movies should know that it's not a good idea to annoy gypsies. Unfortunately for her, this little life lesson appears to have passed Christine Brown by because, in pursuit of a hotly contested promotion at the bank where she is a loan officer, she royally p*sses off an old gypsy woman with the worst upper and lower plates in the history of dentistry. This unpleasant old woman lays a curse on poor Christine (in addition to assaulting her in fairly robust fashion) via a button. This curse is to be applied by a demon called the Lamia, whose modus operandi is to torment the victim for three days before ripping the soul out of them and taking it off to Hell for an eternity of torment. As you do. The rest of the movie is devoted to the aforementioned tormenting, alternating with Christine's increasingly desperate attempts to avoid this fate.
Sam Raimi cut his directorial teeth on the Evil Dead movies. Full of energy, not to mention grossness and humour, these movies were made on tiny budgets which was inevitably reflected in production values (for all of which they worked marvels with the limited budgets they had). Since then he has enjoyed both critical and financial success (not always with the same film!), and Drag Me To Hell sees him returning to horror with a much bigger budget.
With rare exceptions, it is unfair to judge horror films other than as horror films, and this movie is no exception: it is a straightforward horror, following all the conventions. But it's not a bad one. The story, though familiar, is well told and has some small but pleasing wrinkles (Christine's boyfriend, Justin Long as an intellectual mother's boy) is the standard sceptic, but offers Christine unqualified support despite believing that she's suffering from a kind of post traumatic stress syndrome. There is, as you would expect, an adequate supply of moments to make you jump, The effects are fine, and of a quality which reflects the fact that Raimi is no longer on such a meagre budget as he was 20 years ago. Various subplots maybe aren't made full use of, but this doesn't really matter too much. There is a fair sprinkling of characteristic Raimi (mostly gross-out) humour. The ending won't please everybody, but I thought it was fine. In short, it all works, and perfectly well.
Alison Lohman makes a sympathetic protagonist, but the film is stolen by Lorna Raver - as Mrs Ganush she delivers one of the vilest, most malevolent characters seen on screen for ages. I loved her!