A sort of spiritual successor to Evil Dead II; it's funny, it's scary and it's highly entertaining!

Rating: 8/10 (19 July 2009)

Drag Me To Hell is a return, for writer/director Sam Raimi to a legendary film from his past, Evil Dead II. While it's in now way connected to Evil Dead II in terms of story, Raimi stamps DMTH with everything that made his Evil Dead trilogy such a cult classic. And while it's a far cry from an art-cinema masterpiece, what we have in DMTH is an unabashedly fun horror comedy thrill ride.
The story, like the referenced film, is rather simple. Our heroine, Christine Brown (Alison Lohman), pisses off an old gypsy woman (yeah-- not entirely fond of the stereotypical Romani stuff going on in this film) and gets cursed. Now she has three days to escape it before she gets dragged to hell. The fun isn't so much in the rather simple story, but in how Christine struggles to escape the curse and Raimi does a surprising job of throwing around a lot of zany Three Stooges/Looney Tunes inspired comedy and still somehow maintaining all the tension and suspense required in the horror movie.
Honestly, there were some points in the film that I laughed out loud at, which doesn't happen much. Some of the setups for physical comedy are rather hilarious, including an early one where a lack of dentures leads to grossness. Speaking of gross, the film does not hesitate to indulge in gross-out effects, almost all of which was done comically (think the "wall of blood geyser" from Evil Dead II). Despite the rather comic nature of the film, Raimi still reaches deep into the bag of horror tricks and manages to make the audience jump out of its seat with scares and chills.
The only issue I have with the film can be leveled at much of the genre it occupies and that's one of the consequence. When the curtains go down and the jitters of excitement have worn off, you're left wondering, "so what"? But then again, I don't think that DMTH or many other horror films are all that concerned with that as well.
The cast does their job respectably, Lohman capably carrying the internally conflicted Christine well and managing the silly physical comedy well. Lorna Raver throws herself into the vengeful Sylvia Ganush well, also somehow managing to make the old woman rather frightful and comic at the same time. All the other players do decent jobs with their simple roles and keep us engaged. And technically, while the film might be a throwback to the Raimi of old, we're dealing with the budgets that the new Raimi can command and so all the special effects are very glossy and very likely done with a lot of CGI. Nothing looks low budget. Cinematography is subtle, but does a great job of creating lots of dark spaces for scares to happen and keeping things unsettling even when we're in the "safe" spaces in the film.
Ultimately, DMTH is a rather simple film, but one that takes its simple premise and takes it to the best degree it can, much like Evil Dead II. It's both laugh-out-loud funny and jump-out-of-your-seat frightening and the suspense is high enough to keep you at the edge of your seat. And while, Raimi might have left the small budgets of the Evil Dead trilogy behind, he seems to have ripped out its still beating heart and stuffed it into Drag Me To Hell, making a terribly fun popcorn movie that keeps its ambitions simple and meets every single of its entertainment goals. An often unbelievably entertaining film. Thank you, Sam Raimi. 8/10.