Review: DRAG ME TO HELL

I was 17 years old when my buddy Jack and I rented EVIL DEAD for the first time. I had heard about it in movie magazines, a movie so violent and boundary-pushing that it had been banned in Europe and barely seen in America. By the time it was finished, we realized that we had just experienced something special. The film managed to walk a razor thin line between comedy and actual horror with apparent ease, and the bloody effects were the cherry on this very special cake. Over the years, director Sam Raimi has worn down my enthusiasm for his work since that one glorious night so long ago. While EVIL DEAD 2 generally worked, ARMY OF DARKNESS was a miserable attempt to take the DEAD franchise mainstream by ramping up the comedy to excruciating levels of annoyance. DARKMAN was a bomb. The SPIDERMAN series had moments that worked, but I am mostly indifferent to it. THE QUICK AND THE DEAD was campy fun, but not a particularly good Western. Never saw A SIMPLE PLAN, although it is highly acclaimed. So when Raimi announced a welcomed break from SPIDERMAN to make a horror film called DRAG ME TO HELL, my slumbering love of Raimi's wild side began to squirm back to life. The film stars Alison Lohman as Christine Brown, an ambitious loan officer for a prestigious bank. Christine openly covets the open assistant manager position, a job for which she competes with the devious Stu (Reggie Lee). Then one day an old gypsy lady comes to her desk to beg for an extension on her home loan. When Christine refuses, the gypsy lady curses Christine with a visit from the Lamia, a goat-demon that will take her soul to Hell in three days. With that simple set-up, Raimi then cuts loose with a series of sequences that any fan of the DEAD series will recognize instantly. There is a terrific fight in a car early in the film that will remind DEAD fans of the undead battle in the cellar from EVIL DEAD. There is also a couple of bits of business here involving a handkerchief that reminded me of the severed hand in EVIL DEAD 2. But do not mistake this film for a horror movie; it is strictly a comedy that involves a horror movie plot. The entire movie is a visual whirlwind of jokes and random nonsense, some of which plays on horror conventions. The best of these jokes involves the use of high pitched sound to shock audiences; long a horror movie cliche, Raimi pokes fun at its overuse by overusing it himself. Lohman is excellent as Christine, giving her much more depth than a movie like this normally provides. We are rooting for her, which gives the final twenty minutes of the film a terrific kick. Surprisingly good also is Justin Long as Christine's boyfriend Clay. I've never been a fan of Long's, but here he is sweet and intelligent as the token disbeliever. The script has a serious flaw that hurts the film overall. Much of what happens to Christine is supposed to be invisible to everyone around her; it's happening in her mind. The film doesn't play by this rule, however, making Christine's visions real whenever it's convenient for the movie. This detracts from any horror and distracts an intelligent audience. I will also add quickly that I LOVED the ending of this film. It comes out of nowhere, and it made me smile broadly. While many reviews are calling this Raimi's return to form, DRAG ME TO HELL is a long way from touching the momentum and pure visual verve of his early works. But Raimi does a terrific job of dragging us more than halfway there, and it's a blast.