Drag Me to Hell

2009 horror-comedy

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Christine the bank loan officer has a nice job, a future promotion, and a loving boyfriend. One day, an old woman with a creepy eye tries to get a third mortgage extension, and Christine, trying to impress the boss, turns her down. The old woman puts a curse on Christine who, after seeking the professional advice from a psychic, finds out that she's going to be dragged to hell in three days. Oh, snap!

This roller coaster ride of a movie made me feel like I did when I watched and loved Evil Dead II as a kid. I laughed, jumped a little, laughed again, and sat in awe of Raimi's technical wizardry and childish creativity. Sam Raimi's that type of director who probably giggles uncontrollably while he works on his movies in the editing room. Drag Me to Hell is stuffed with gimmicks, has a dopey story, and is probably guilty of using those gimmicks to hide the dopey story. But it's also about as funny as a horror movie can be and as scary as a comedy can be and one of the most entertaining movies I've seen in a long time. Stylistic touches (askew cameras and quick zooms) and his skewed Stooges and Looney Tunes inspired dark humor are reminiscent of the Evil Dead trilogy although Raimi's Spidey powers allow for the finished product to look a lot more polished. It certainly is fun. The sound effects are also a lot of fun. Things clang when they're not supposed to clang and swish when there's no logical reason for swishing so that the film is aurally as adventurous and exaggerated as it is visually. There were two scenes I had to rewind to see a second time, and an early fight scene in a parking garage is arguably the greatest fight scene in movie history. I'm not even kidding. I can't remember seeing anything this completely ridiculous, a movie that so frequently had me shaking my head and saying, "This is insanity." I mean that as a compliment, of course. I definitely enjoyed this more than any Spiderman movie and can happily say that this makes up for the waste of time that Spiderman 3 was.