Drag Me To Hell

Review: Drag Me to Hell

Dir. Sam Raimi

Cert 15

99 mins

2009

Sam Raimi’s wickedly entertaining return to slapstick horror doesn’t need to drag me to hell. This glorious pantomime of giggle-inducing terror will have audiences queuing up to cross the Styx and sip cocktails with Satan himself.

It’s been a long time since horror was this much fun. Drag Me To Hell is in every way a successor to the Evil Dead series that cemented Raimi as king of the splatter-happy spook show. Christine (Alison Lohman), a simple country girl trying to make it in the big city, is told by her boss that she’s just too nice for the mean ol’ world of banking. Unfortunately, Christine’s opportunity to prove herself takes the form of turning down a loan extension to a foul gypsy crone (Lorna Raver, sensationally revolting). The wild-eyed hag sneaks into Christine’s car after work, and the poor girl winds up slapped with a particularly nasty gypsy curse.

Christine spends the next three days being deliciously tormented by a demon called the Lamia, who likes to toy with its victims before literally dragging them to hell. The Lamia’s playful cruelty is a delight: it swings Christine around like a yo-yo, sprays her with ooze and gleefully drives the wholesome farm girl just a little bit bonkers. It’s easy to feel slightly guilty watching all of this… but not enough to stop smiling.

Drag Me To Hell is a perfect marriage of ghoulish shocks to gross-out comedy. Set to a nerve-grating soundtrack, a typical scene builds tension in a classic slow burn, culminating in a sudden fright that’s dripping with several shades of first-rate supernatural goop. The beauty is that once Raimi achieves his big scare, he doesn’t just let the scene drop and move on. After scaring the pants off us, he turns our fear into fits of hysterics at the sheer foulness of his imagination. Eyeballs, gallons of fake blood and buckets of slime are hurled around like some Satanic food fight. The comedic timing of these atrocities is sublime, and more than a little camp.

It’s a horror that plays on the anxieties of the mostly good. Christine is no saint, but she’s a decent person. A former fat kid, she struggles to resist slipping into a bakery for some illicit pastry lovin’ on her way to work. Despite an alcoholic mother and a difficult childhood, she’s managed to become a well adjusted adult and is committed to bettering herself. She’s trying painfully hard to impress her professor boyfriend (Justin Long)’s judgemental WASP parents, who share Christine’s obvious belief that she’s punching above her weight. But one small ethical compromise and she’s being audited by hell’s bank manager. And he has a sense of humour!

Scary, silly and above all fun, this little ghost-train of a film is hysterical, plain and simple. Drag Me To Hell is a blast.

8/10

-James