Raimi's latest is frightening - except when Justin Long shows up

Rating: 7/10 (7 June 2009)

A put-upon loan officer (Alison Lohman) denies a mortgage extension to an old woman, who subsequently puts a horrific curse on her that damns the soul to, well, hell. Sam Raimi’s horror tale is very stylish, as expected, although it lags during the quieter moments, particularly when Justin Long (as Lohman’s boyfriend) is around.
Christine Brown (Lohman) is trying to get promoted to assistant bank manager by her officious boss (played by David Paymer), who favors Christine’s brown-nosing coworker Stu. One fine day, a woman (Lorna Raver) pleads with Christine for help with her mortgage; knowing her boss wouldn’t want her to grant another extension, Christine denies the woman, thus incurring her wrath. Said wrath includes a brutal attack in an underground parking garage (nothing good ever happens there in movies, you know), as well as at Christine’s house.
Watching this movie demands a certain amount of disbelief suspension, more so even for your typical horror movie. At one point, the old woman puts her fist through Christine’s mouth, with no repercussions. Another time, Christine actually hurls an office supply into the woman’s eyeball. Again, no real damage. In fact, after that first physical encounter in the parking garage, both women probably should have died three or four times.
As I mentioned, the movie lags whenever there’s no true horror going on, as if Raimi wasn’t quite sure what to do with all of his secondary characters. Lohman has good chemistry with Long, but that’s about the only positive: Long himself is wooden, a lightweight even by horror-movie standards, so although the two actors seem to connect, their scenes together seem flat, almost forced. And that’s not all of it, either. There’s an (understandably) awkward dinner with Long’s parents, a high-minded, upper-crust family, that doesn’t resonate as much as if ought to. You pay more attention to Long’s jerkish parents (particularly his snotty mother) than to Lohman’s curse-related issues.
It’s important to note, though, that the horror scenes are unbelievably scary. The film opens with an electric scene in which a young boy is literally dragged to the bowels of hell before his parents’ eyes, all because he swiped a gypsy woman’s necklace. And every action scene thereafter is powerful, gross, stylish stuff. (In fact, for a PG-13 movie, the scenes are very intense - I think standards have changed just a tad over the past couple of decades.) Bottom line: It’s a good-looking horror movie with many genuinely terrifying moments that are offset only slightly by Justin Long’s annoying performance and character interactions that lag and seem out of place.