In Drag Me To Hell, Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) is an ambitious L.A. loan officer with a charming boyfriend, professor Clay Dalton (Justin Long). Life is good until the mysterious Mrs. Ganush (Lorna Raver) arrives at the bank to beg for an extension on her home loan. Should Christine follow her instincts and give the old woman a break? Or should she deny the extension to impress her boss, Mr. Jacks (David Paymer), and get a leg-up on a promotion? Christine fatefully chooses the latter, shaming Mrs. Ganush and dispossessing her of her home. 
In retaliation, the old woman places the powerful curse of the Lamia on Christine, transforming her life into a living hell. Haunted by an evil spirit and misunderstood by a skeptical boyfriend, she seeks the aid of seer Rham Jas (Dileep Rao) to save her soul from eternal damnation. To help the shattered Christine return her life to normal, the psychic sets her on a frantic course to reverse the spell. As evil forces close in, Christine must face the unthinkable: how far will she go to break free of the curse? Director Sam Raimi returns to the horror genre with Drag Me To Hell, an original tale of a young woman's desperate quest to break an evil curse. For those who were worried that filmmaker Sam Raimi had become lost in the wilds of big-budget Hollywood, well, you can rest easy. To those who hold a very special fondness for Mr. Raimi's Evil Dead trilogy, his latest film represents a powerfully welcome return to the horror genre -- and it's evident after only 10 minutes of Drag Me to Hell that Raimi still holds a lot of love for the horror genre. It is not only one of the most entertaining and accessible studio horror films of the past several years, it's proof that your horror flick doesn't have to be "hard R" to deliver the chills. This is a film indicative of a writer/director who is having FUN settling back into a comfortable old genre -- and for those who've been along for the ride from the early days, Drag Me to Hell is an absolute treat for the genre faithful. The story itself is classic Raimi, revolving around an evil curse that causes bad things to happen to normal people. Proceedings kick off in Pasadena, Calif. in 1969 and involve a young boy stealing a bracelet from a gypsy and the dire, hell-dragging consequences that follow. A crowd-pleasing pre-credit sequence, it perfectly sets the scene for what is to follow -- 90 minutes of unadulterated, uncompromising horror heaven. The film then cuts to the present day and follows the efforts of ambitious loan officer Christine Brown (Lohman) to earn a promotion at work. According to her boss, this will involve "making the tough decisions," and so when the elderly Mrs. Ganush comes in requesting help with the payments on her house, Christine flatly turns her down, then humiliates the woman as she begs for help. This is a mistake. The woman's long, dirty nails, thick Eastern European accent and malevolently evil eye single her out as a gypsy, and as everyone who has ever refused an offer of "lucky heather" knows, you shouldn't mess with gypsies. Ganush attacks Christine in the office, then later as she heads home for the day, and this is where the film really takes off. The sequence in and around Christine's car is a true horror tour-de-force. Raimi employs all his creative skills to craft a scene that's shocking, disturbing, terrifying and hilarious all at once. He makes a handkerchief threatening. He turns a stapler into a potentially deadly weapon. And he does things with teeth -- jagged teeth, missing teeth and even a set of aging dentures -- that had the audience going wild. The scene is signature Raimi, combining highly stylised horror with humour to create genuine spectacle that smashes you round the head like a sledgehammer. And if there's any criticism, it's that the film struggles to top the sequence from here-on-in. Raimi and Co. do their best, however, as Christine has now been hit by the deadly curse of the Lamia that will result in her being dragged through the demonic ringer. Cue a visit to a fortune teller and much soul-searching as our heroine has to decide how far she will go to break the gypsy curse, and some inspired action involving maggots, flies, and a talking goat that will live long in the memory. To reveal any more would be to ruin the many surprises that the filmmaker has up his sleeve, but suffice to say that a decade spent working in the mainstream universe of the Spider-Man movies hasn't diminished Raimi's capacity to deliver sick, twisted, macarbre celluloid. He's also nailed it in terms of cast. Lohman is a revelation as the woman whose life is turned into a living hell, her gradual descent into curse-induced madness extremely convincing, and her transformation from sweet loan officer to tough-talking, butt-kicking warrior a joy to behold. Justin Long and Dileep Rao lend fine support as the boyfriend and seer attempting to save her soul, but the real star of the show, and the woman who will give you nightmares long after the credits have rolled, is Lorna Raver as Mrs. Ganush. Whether mysteriously materialising on screen, violently attacking her prey, or embarking on yet another crazed gypsy tantrum, the film comes alive whenever she appears, and it wouldn't be a surprise to see her character become a true horror icon.
Indeed the only criticism I could level at it is a somewhat contrived plot device employed early on and then sign-posted throughout for the sake of the film's conclusion. It feels forced and clumsy and threatened to spoil my enjoyment of the film's finale, but that's a minor quibble with what is a major horror success. All too often films get labelled with the phrase "rollercoaster ride," but that sums up Drag Me to Hell in a nutshell. It's a visceral assault on the senses and will have you gasping for breath as the laughs and scares mount. Raimi directs with the confidence and flair of a genre master, while his cast attacks the material with such gusto that it's impossible not to be swept away by the kinetic energy of it all. The result is the most fun I've had in a theatre this year. A gypsy cursed 4 on my "Go See" scale.
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