People talk about returning to their roots like it's a good thing, but I think they're forgetting that roots are usually surrounded by half-buried garbage and bug-digested corpses.
If I were to return to my roots, I would be back squatting on some guy's balcony and using fishing line to snag bratwurst off my downstairs neighbor's hibachi because it's too hard to catch pigeons after your second 40 of Ballantine Ale. Does that sound like good times to you? Really? In that case, I'm an Aquarius, and I really do like long walks on the beach.
Fact is, our "roots" are usually the things we did because we were too poor and dumb to do any better back then. At least that's the definition for normal people, i.e. those of us who only wish we could afford hookers to get busted in the tabloids with. It's different for artists and entertainers, though; for them, going back to their roots means going back to the way they thought before they had kids and got boring.
Director Sam Raimi came up doing crazy horror films, but he's spent most of the last decade running a gigantic Hollywood flagship. By all indications, his latest film, Drag Me to Hell, would be a trip back to the style that made his career.
If loan officer Alison Lohman wants the assistant manager position at her bank, she's told she'll have to prove she can make the tough decisions. Her first test comes in the form of Lorna Raver, an old woman whose home is about to be repossessed.
To the delight of her manager and the dismay of Raver, Lohman turns the old woman down. Enraged and humiliated, Raver returns after work to place Lohman under a terrible gypsy curse.
Lohman soon learns she's being tormented by a soul-eating demon called a lamia. If she doesn't banish the beast or remove the curse within three days, the lamia will steal her soul down to hell and she'll never live again.
Sam Raimi was a ballsy choice to direct the Spider-Man franchise: he's made a couple crummy movies, and his classics, like Evil Dead and Army of Darkness, aren't things you would recommend to anyone you think would be fazed by a little girl-on-tree action. That's not really the resume of a dude you'd tap to make megajumbo summer blockbusters. But that choice paid off to the tune of enough money to buy a stealth bomber and incinerate anyone who talks smack about him, making it an especially good thing that Drag Me to Hell is a mostly successful return to Raimi's horror roots.
This includes the kinetic, absurdist violence that made his early movies so much fun. Lots of horror films have creaking gates and banging pots and pans, but few carry the raw physical menace you get here. And except for Red Blender: The Secret Ingredient Is Death, none build sequences around the sheer terror of a killer cake. In a Raimi movie, the whole world is out to kill you.
Sure, this gets silly when a floating handkerchief repeatedly threatens Lohman's life, but Drag Me to Hell finds a way to be funny without interrupting the scary. It's often both at once; during scenes like when Raver is barfing floods of worms straight into Lohman's screaming mouth, it's hard to know whether to laugh or yurk into an empty popcorn bucket.
All this character and personality helps the movie through a pretty standard story: girl gets haunted/cursed/possessed, weird shit ensues, then someone calls in the God Squad for a big crazy exorcism. For once I'd like to see the afflicted party banish their demon through a hot dog-eating contest. Or a little canasta maybe?
But Raimi pushes it further than most exorcism movies, taking Lohman's efforts to free herself in an odd, comically disturbing direction that makes you wish the rest of the film had been as thoughtful yet wild.
Still, despite the lack of imagination at its center, Drag Me to Hell is loud, angry, gross and funny — a good movie from a man who's proven he's capable of greatness.
Grade: B