AAAAH!!! AAAHH!!! AAAAHH!!!

Review: “Drag Me To Hell”

Rating: 92%

Ahem.

Attention Mom/Dad/Caroline/Corelyn: you are strictly forbidden to see “Drag Me To Hell.” Under no circumstances may you partake of this film.

Attention Holly: get to a theater!

I’ll come right out and say it: “Drag Me To Hell” is the best horror film I’ve seen since “The Descent.” I can’t remember the last time I laughed, screamed (I’m not kidding, I was hollering) and almost vomited in such rapid succession. Director Sam Raimi has said that his goal with this movie was to make a carnival funhouse ride come to life, and he absolutely nailed it, God bless him. After decades of self-serious torture porn passing itself off as “horror,” I can’t tell you how good it feels to have an old salt back at the helm, doing what he still does best. It restores my faith in the genre.

Where do I even begin, Dear Reader? From the moment the lights in the theater went down, I could feel that I was in the hands of a master. Raimi, for those of you who are not aware, is most famous for directing the “Spider Man” movies, but he got his start directing a low-budget horror film called “Evil Dead.” As campy and gross as they come, it was a masterpiece of 80s horror, quickly followed by a budget-upgraded “Evil Dead II” and the balls-to-the-wall “Army of Darkness,” perhaps the most amazingly ridiculous movie ever made. All three of these films are treasures in the horror community, disliking them is about as acceptable as disliking “The Godfather.” Sam developed a reputation as the auteur of horror-comedy, the king of making you laugh and then making you beg for mercy. His writing and direction displays a cunning understanding of how thin the line between “funny” and “scary” is, and the more he blurs it, the more he gets both out of you. Unlike the vast majority of his genre comrades, Sam Raimi’s movies are fun. Not family fun by any stretch of the imagination, but fun nonetheless.

So now, after a too-long absence due to a certain web-slinging sensation, our boy is back with “Drag Me To Hell.” The set-up is delicious: we meet Christine, a decent-enough loan officer at a local bank who’s hoping to get a promotion on hard work and a good attitude; her boss wants someone who can make “the tough decisions.” Her competition is a sniveling weasel willing to do anything to get ahead, and it’s beginning to feel like she isn’t going to cut it. Along comes Mrs. Ganush, a slightly menacing old gypsy woman who is facing foreclosure after already receiving two extensions. Christine’s instinct is to help her, but in an effort to impress her boss she turns the woman’s application down. Mrs. Ganush does not take this well, and places a dreadful curse on our poor heroine: for three days she will be tormented, and then a fearsome demon will come to claim her soul.

First off, what a great setup. Many people have read all kinds of morals into this plot, thinking it has something to do with the recent economic woes, but I believe the real magic here is how it taps into the story devices of old, where a cruel twist of fate invites a disproportionate penalty for sin. There is a constant twinge of guilt throughout the film, because Mrs. Ganush is not some guy in a mask who kills for no reason, she has been humiliated and wants vengeance. Even though Christine’s motives and actions are defensible, she brings the wrath upon herself. This, in my opinion, is juicier subject matter for a good horror film than, “He’s insane! He kills teenagers!” We all encounter situations in life where we pay more dearly for mistakes than we should, and when we do we come to realize how frightening life can be, how little things can explode into gigantic ones.

Once the curse is set, the movie never lets up. There are funhouse pop-outs that drop like sledghammers, the kind that send barrels of popcorn to the ceiling. There are slow-burn suspense scenes during which the tension is wound so tight it becomes unbearable, where we slowly turn to see something we are horribly afraid of. Raimi has commented several times that he thinks slow reveals are scarier than pop-outs, and I have always agreed, but he takes it to the next level here; one in particular was probably the scariest of its kind I have ever experienced (SPOILER: when Christine gets into her car and sees a hankerchief floating in the air, look out END SPOILER).

This flick is scary, I don’t know how else to put it. If you’re asking me whether it’s scary, the answer is “yes.” I’m aware that fright is in the eye of the beholder, and almost every horror film ever made will fail to intimidate some people, but “Drag Me To Hell” hit all of my buttons dead-on. I was a jumbled mess when the credits rolled. To make it even better, Raimi got big laughs throughout the running time, a few of them contained within the scariest scenes. The tone of the film was right on the money:  I was always apprehensive, always on edge, but still having a great time.

The acting is fine, getting the job done and not making waves. Alison Lohman does fine work in the lead, Justin Long handles the boyfriend role well enough. Unfortunately for both of them, however, this is the type of story where the least interesting characters are the leads. Lorna Raver is tremendous as the lead villain, a monstrous old gypspy like the kind that used to frighten you as a child. Never for a moment did I think of her as an actress, the character was a complete creation. David Paymer has fun as the shrewd and somewhat canaiving bank manager, he’s one of those Hollywood character actors who adds an invaluable ounce of . Dileep Rao conveys impressive depths with very little flash as the fortune teller who serves as Christine’s advisor in her battle against the Lamia.

This has been a hard review to write because there’s little to talk about with this film. It aimed for a mark and then nailed it, dead-on. The script was tight, the confidence of the direction was palpable, and the laugh-scares just kept coming. Many worthy films have tried combining comedy with horror, and I think history shows this feat to be surprisingly difficult. Some went too deep into horror (“Slither”), some were a bit too comedic (“Shaun of the Dead”). They’re still great films, but they exist in a more specific space than they would have you believe. “Drag Me To Hell” is the true horror-comedy, a perfect blend which impossibly manages to serve two masters. If you like horror movies, you need to be in the theater pronto.