Good cheesy fun

Rating: 7/10 (30 June 2009)

Extremely enjoyable if somewhat over-praised horror film from Sam Raimi, harking back to the "Evil Dead" movies that launched his career. They were genuinely cheap and cheerful but Raimi has gone on to bigger and better things. Consequently, this amalgam of high and low-tech only manages to push some of the right buttons. It aims for low-down good fun and for most of the time it manages it but it lacks the fright factor that would have made it something of a classic.
Alison Lohman, (very good), is the bank official who finds herself the victim of a gypsy curse when she refuses an old lady an extension on her mortgage. To put it simply, the curse is that after three days of torment she will, quite literally, be dragged to hell. Cue some good set pieces and some decent special effects and it's nice, for a change, to see a horror movie that is based on the supernatural and not on some stalk-and-slash psycho, (though the old gypsy woman proves to be a pretty nifty stalk-and-slash psycho as she helps put Alison through those three days of torment).
We get two big anti-climaxes, both well handled, before the inevitable final twist. (Anyone who has seen this kind of thing before will see it coming, though I admit I only half-guessed the outcome). This is the kind of old-fashioned nonsense William Castle might have made; just don't go expecting too much and please Sam, don't go making the apparently obligatory sequel.