Alison Lohman stars as Christine Brown, a young up and coming bank employee who’s looking for a shot at the vacant assistant manager post. But she soon finds out that the boss is already eying a new guy for the job--someone who hasn’t even been around as long as Christine. Her boss, Mr. Jacks, explains that the new guy is being considered because he’s more aggressive, and that’s what they’re looking for. And the fact that Christine’s taking lunch orders for them isn’t a very good sign of her chances for the gig. To make matters worse, Christine overhears a phone conversation between her boyfriend and his mother, where the old lady is pressuring her son to dump Christine and find somebody "better."
And so, when an elderly woman named Mrs. Ganush arrives at the bank, asking for
an extension on her mortgage, Christine decides to use this moment to prove to
everybody--herself most of all--that she’s no pushover, and is as aggressive as
they come. She firmly denies Ganush the extension, which basically dooms the old
woman to being thrown out on the street, as the bank has now foreclosed on her
and seized her home. But Mrs. Ganush may well have the last laugh, because she
places a curse on Christine in which she will be stalked by a demon who will
drag her soul to hell. After spending the better part of the last decade
directing three Spider-Man movies, Sam Raimi returns to the genre where he got
his start: horror, and he does so with a vengeance.
Drag Me To Hell is more than just a return to form for the director, it’s also a
welcome return to his more mischievous side as a filmmaker. Watching him make
the Spider-Man films was like watching a thoroughbred racehorse being harnessed
to a milk cart--don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the Spider-Man movies, especially
Spider-Man 2, which I think is the best of the lot.
Despite their fantasy elements, the Spider-Man films played it straight, and I
missed the rambunctious, silly, off the wall humor that Raimi is famous for,
such as in the Evil Dead films. Drag Me To Hell isn’t that much over the top,
but it has its moments, such as the fun scene when Christine pays a visit to a
funeral and winds up getting uncomfortably close with the corpse.
Raimi uses the film’s more creepy and unsettling moments to rift on the current flu hysteria by having Christine the target of various gross bodily fluids and other disgusting stuff. In the unrated director’s cut version, these scenes are more in your face (sometimes literally!). But rather than be a complete cartoon, Raimi also makes some sly commentary on the profit- above-all-else mentality of banks (who have recently become Hollywood’s new favorite big screen villains), as well as taking personal responsibility for your own actions. Yet Drag Me To Hell (love that title!) is, above all, loads of fun. In this era filled with horror remakes and sequels, it’s great to see one of the masters show how it’s done with a completely new and reinvigorated take on the genre.
--SF
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