Drag Me to Hell

So this week's cinematic outing was the Sam Raimi directed horror flick 'Drag Me to Hell' starring Alison Lohman and Justin Long:


A lot of people are probably only familiar with Raimi from his work on the Spider-man films, but his Evil Dead trilogy (Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness) are horror classics, combing genuine scares and creepiness, with tongue-in-cheek, laugh out loud moments.

Basically, that same style is applied to his latest effort and although this isn't the scariest horror film around, it's one of the most entertaining I've seen in a long while - lightyears ahead of limp spooky-schlockers such as the silly and derivative The Unborn.

Premise - Christine (Alison Lohman in a hopefully break-through role) works at a bank and is keen on being promoted to Assistant Manager, a position she must earn by demonstrating ability to make tough decisions. When an old lady faces her home being repossessed by the bank, Christine refuses to grant her a third extension, thereby the old gypsy woman's wrath. The gypsy has a particularly nasty trick up her sleeve involving cursing Christine with the Lamia, a demon goat spirit that torments its victims for 3 days and on the final day dragging them down to burn in the depths of hell for eternity.

Without spoiling anything, the 3 days results in a campaign of misery and supernatural torture for the poor girl as she tries to find ways to rid herself of the terrible curse, and the thrills and spills along the way make for a hugely entertaining film - one minute you're jumping in your seat, then squirming in disgust, before big laughs and relief - a cycle which is repeated several times but never gets old due in part to a sense of fun and playful wickedness in the direction and set pieces, but also Lohman's acting and character.

I'd give this 4/5, I would have liked it to be a bit scarier and there is an obvious twist that plays out painfully slowly, detracting from some of the tension, but Raimi has once again breathed fresh life into the horror genre and I'm hoping this will cause other horror directors to up their game and not just churn out the same old tired remakes and sequels we've been subjected to recently (see Friday 13th, the Saw films, The Last House on the Left etc).