Directed by Sam Raimi
(R)
****
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A loan officer tries to escape eternal damnation.
Drag Me to Hell does “everything we want a horror film to do,” said Betsy Sharkey in the Los Angles Times. “It is fearsomely scary, wickedly funny, and diabolically gross.” When a loan officer (Alison Lohman) refuses to extend the mortgage of a one-eyed hag, the old witch unleashes an ancient curse on her. Director Sam Raimi—who helmed the Spider-Man films but got his start with the 1981 cult classic The Evil Dead—“knows exactly what he’s doing with every scene and every scream.” Reveling in his horror roots, Raimi has made the “most crazy, fun, and terrifying horror movie in years,” said Owen Gleiberman in Entertainment Weekly. Scary movies are all about rhythm, and he plays each shock “like a maestro,” orchestrating a “tongue-in-cheek symphony of fear.” Raimi, who co-wrote the film with his brother Ivan, shows us how scary movies should be made, said Claudia Puig in USA Today. After all the schlock we’ve put up with from the genre, this “slick, old-school scarefest” is one awful delight.
