Drag Me To Hell (2009)

Hot off the heels of his mainstream acceptance with the Spider-man films, Sam Raimi returns to the genre that got him into the business to begin with.

Alison Lohman stars as Christine, she is a young aspiring loans officer at a bank who, in an attempt to get an assistant manager's position, shames an old gypsy woman by denying her an extension on her mortgage. That, as it turns out, was quite the mistake. On her way home the old woman is waiting for her and during a struggle manages to curse our poor heroine with one of the nastiest things in the book. (Presumably the gypsies keep books with all these curses, after all; the psychics, mediums etc always manage to find a book amongst their collection that will help with the exposition.) In this particular instance it is Rham Jas (Dileep Rao) who comes to the rescue albeit reluctantly at first. Also at her side is Christine's boyfriend Clay as portrayed by Justin Long, although he is not a believer in curses, he does believe in Christine.

Drag Me to Hell plays partly as a comedy, but mostly as a horror and adheres to all of the usual cliche horror moments, the loud noises, the scary jumpy out bits when all is quiet, as well as the obligatory visit to a cemetery during a thunderstorm (when is Hollywood going to learn that lightning and thunder are not the same thing....) that it does all of these things with its tongue firmly in cheek allows for some overlooking.

For the most part I enjoyed the film, but I think that has a lot to do with how well Alison Lohman is cast, she plays Christine as the everyday girl just trying to get ahead, regrettably she chooses the wrong time to take action, but we actually care about her character though and want her to succeed in her quest to get the curse lifted. After all, she only has 3 days before she is being dragged to hell for eternity.