Drag Me to Hell

There's a fine line between terror and laughter--at least as far as movie-watching is concerned--and Sam Raimi treads that line well. After jumping out of your seat or gasping at the horrors on screen, a natural reaction is to giggle nervously or in relief. His horror comedies--the Evil Dead films and now Drag Me to Hell--capitalize on these bordering reactions with glee, placing a scary moment right next to one that could have audiences falling out of their seats with laughter.

Alison Lohman stars in Drag Me to Hell as Christine Brown, a pretty, likable loan officer up for a promotion at her bank. But a cutthroat coworker(Reggie Lee) is vying for the same job, and their boss (David Paymer) advises her to make the tough decisions. Her next client is an elderly Hungarian woman (Lorna Raver), who begs Christine to give her more time on her house loan. With her promotion in mind, Christine denies the request, setting her off on a road to, well, hell. Despite her fragile appearance, the woman is a powerful gypsy, and she saddles Christine with a curse that will first torment her, then it will claim her soul.

There are shocks and scares aplenty in Drag Me to Hell, but it's most horrifying when Raimi goes for the gross-out. It's easy to imagine him consulting his young sons for advice here; the ideas are so disgusting that it seems they could've only come from boys used to being as creatively crude as possible. But that's not to say the scenes aren't perfectly executed: Raimi and his crew use excellent techniques, and it all looks far too real for the audience's good.

Though the marketing makes Drag Me to Hell look like a traditional chiller, the film is far more comic than we've been led to believe. Fans of Raimi's past work in Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness will be happy to see their director returning to the genre, and they'll be glad that he hasn't lost his taste for flying eyeballs.