Hell hath no fury like Raimi in adrenaline

Rating: 9/10 (2 June 2009)

Trammed by "Spider-Man 3"'s excessive heft, Sam Raimi returns to basics in "Drag Me to Hell", placing him back into the slapstick horror department that defined his early film-making career. Unsurprisingly, his latest horror-comedy, as it turns out, functions pretty much in the same vein as his "The Evil Dead" series, employing a straightforward supernatural tale to peddle in as much ridiculously over-the-top pulp and madcap cattiness as its R-13 (the local rating) would allow. Devoid of the ungainly qualities of his last superhero project, Raimi pulls no punches this time around in dealing out cartoonish nastiness and the verve he brings forth proves to be amusingly contagious.
Christine (Alison Lohman) is a loan officer whose amiable nature proves to be one of the greatest hindrances in finally bagging that much-coveted assistant manager position, a position that requires decisiveness according to her boss (David Paymer). So when Mrs. Ganush (Lorna Rayver), a scraggly woman with grayish fingernails and sharp crooked teeth, comes at her desk asking for an extension for her home loan, she denies the request despite the old woman's subsequent begging, in an attempt to impress her boss. Poor Christine, as Mrs. Ganush turns out to be a gypsy, unleashing a curse on Christine that torments her for three days before a goat-demon, well, drags her to hell.
The craziness that stems from this, taking off from a hilariously drawn-out altercation between Christine and Mrs. Ganush in a parking lot, comes at such a breakneck pace yet the frenetic onslaught from one comic-horror scheme to another is handled wonderfully by Raimi, who consistently keeps this camp spookfest's tension high. "Drag Me to Hell" piles on the "Gotcha!" scares like it's going out of fashion, yet the cranked-up effectiveness that Raimi composes makes those delightful jump-out-of-your-seat experience -- punctuated by Lohman's face being the ground zero of icky filth and body orifice projectile -- amusingly deserved.