• What’s Good: A horror comedy hasn’t been attempted since Slither (one of my favorites from 2007) and, well, it didn’t turn out too well because everybody hated that film. The film has a great (and simple) set-up and greater pay-off.
• What’s Not: Here is a horror film that is too good for horror fans. The film was marketed as a deep dark girl in trouble horror film. Marketed towards people who (a) have never seen “Evil Dead” and (b) didn’t know this film’s isn’t as deep or dark or scary as they hope.
• Faux Peter Travers Quote: This film will drag YOU to the scares! 

Sam Raimi, you are hereby forgiven for making the “Spider-Man” films. The fringe-now-Hollywood filmmaker’s latest (non-franchise) work, “Drag Me To Hell,” is a refreshing reminder that a free director is an interesting director. Raimi approaches “Hell” with the attitude that a horror film need not get bogged down with high concepts or teenage stars or even torture, that, instead, it can be fun and still be scary. Yes, he did “Spider-Man” but forget that for now, the first piece of information every viewer should be made aware of is that the creator of this strange horror film made the “Evil Dead” series –gonzo horror if ever the two could be applied to each other– but he also made “The Gift,” a stylish thriller about psychics in the South and “A Simple Plan,” a film where money is truly the root of all evil. Well, he takes that adage literally on his trip to “Hell,” a winningly morbid film that blends elements from all three; the beauty of one, the darkness of the other and the macabre-edy of the “Evil Dead.”

At the heart of “Hell” is the perpetually prepubescent looking Allison Lohman (“Matchstick Men”) as Christine Brown, the what-else-but innocent loan manager tormented by a gypsy after she chooses (a key word here) to reject the old bag’s final mortgage extension. The house is taken, the gypsy is mad, the girl is fucked. Forget the bank stuff for a sec and this film actually sounds scary –and it is at times– but it’s also played for laughs; ex. the gypsy whips out her false teeth, drools on, nibbles on and curses on the poor girl all within a five minute span. The aftermath of the curse is endless (fun) torture done up with great style and a brilliant sense of comic timing that I haven’t seen since “Shaun of the Dead” and, before that, “Evil Dead 2″ two of the best cut and paced horror films of all time. This is the third! Each stinger is calculated with a great, malicious glee. Post curse, not only does Christine hear voices and take desperate measures to rid the hallucinations but her body is put through the horror ringer as much as any action hero. The “Thinner” meets “Tales from the Crypt” plot is so bare and stupid that even the  “gypsy curses a girl description” is too much. Just say “gypsy curse.” Whatever it’s called ”Hell” is a nice distraction from the mid-decade onslaught of blond heroines tormented by ghosts genre that, it should be noted, a fair share Raimi cursed us with himself (he produced the rancid ”Grudge” remakes, “Bogeymen” and ”The Messenger”). So it’s a nice bit of karma service that Raimi himself joins the blond-girl-in-peril fray without the ”look at my horror mastery” pretensions I thought he had after looking at his production slate. Eschewing the usual haunted hooey, Raimi goes for a light approach that almost seems to be mocking the serious J-horror/J-horror remake crap. “Hell” isn’t a parody but after a decade of bad female driven horror films it might as well be.

I haven’t even mentioned the cast, which is perfectly cast with lesser know performers. The gypsy Mrs. Ganush is played by TV actor Lorna Raver and she not only looks the part and acts the part but, post death (not really a spoiler since she dies in the first act), her obviously fake body provides “Weekend at Bernies” level of shock laughter. There’s also an Indian psychic (Dileep Rao) that helps Lohman’s character and, while never cracking a joke, always seems to be on the bubble of making one. He’s really good. And, okay, so is Justin Long as her boyfriend. While he plays the obligatory dude that’s totally “there” for the scared heroine, I appreciated his lighthearted but always concerned approach (his and the film’s final scene is one of the best in all of horror-dom). While Raimi may be forgiven for the “Spider-Man” films, Long isn’t off the hook for all those Apple ads; it doesn’t help matters that he uses a giant Apple desktop computer while taking calls from an iPhone that, in one scene where Lohman tries to call him, is framed in the foreground so prominently that I thought I was watching a Brian De Palma split screen shot.

Whatever. I had a great time which is not something I usually can write about a horror film for even the ones I looooooooovvvvvveeeeee such as “Let the Right One In” are not exactly what I would call a “great time.” The thing of it is, Raimi had a great time too. It shows in almost every shot. There’s a moment where Lohman is attacked and cornered by an unseen demon trickster in a shed and what happens next is almost exactly what would happen in an “Evil Dead” film: the film pans up to reveal a rope, follows that rope over to an anvil (of course!) and cuts to a knife cutting the rope which plummets down with a great whoosh and squishes the demon whose fluids nail Catherine right in the kisser. Ash would be proud. Raimi doesn’t give a fuck if he’s being derivative, besides, being derivative of “Evil Dead” is not that common anymore and most welcome.

“Drag” features some of the most lively and humorous animal moments I’ve ever seen in a horror film. When told she must sacrifice a living creature by the psychic, the desperate vegetarian gives one of the best lines of the film when she gets home and says “here kitty, kitty, kitty.” Another botched sacrifice occurs when a goat is brought to a séance. A servant brings the occult animal to the table, chains it up and…….. after a few awkward moments of silence the animal looks at Lohman and almost seems to be smiling (necessary, no. great, yes). Then there’s that wonderful moment that occurs the night that Lohman is cursed by the gypsy. In a tight close-up of Lohman’s face a fly buzzes on her eyelid, jumps to the other then finds its way to her nose. It’s buzzing turns into mad whispering, it then flies into her nose going in one nostril and out the other. Finally, it comes to her closed lips and shimmies its way into her mouth. She wakes up choking and the fly pops out.

My point isn’t to drone on about Raimi’s quirky touches (I could go on and on about a fight scene that takes place with a handkerchief!!!) but to simply state that the writer/director has crafted a B-horror film that suits him more or at least as much as any personal project he’s attached his name to; this project must be especially liberating after being tethered to the “Spider-Man” universe.

As I was leaving the theater an usher and fellow nerd looked at me and said “how many times do you thing she got stuff shoved in her mouth.” Now, this is one of the few female driven horror films where that does not mean what you think it does. My answer, “a lot… she got it worse than Ash” defines the character pretty well instead. The usher then asked the next couple, “so did you laugh?” They shrugged, grunted and scurried along their way, presumably to watch the “Friday the 13th” remake. I think they didn’t GET this film. That is probably because horror fans…….. are dumb. Which, in turn, is usually because the genre is. A film like “Hell” challenges that notion with the simple twist of making the scares silly without taking away what makes them scary. When Lohman finds the evil gypsy waiting for her in her car it’s scary!/When she staples the old monster’s head and crams a ruler in her throat which is shot back out like a projectile weapon, it’s funny/when she tracks down and approaches the gypsy’s now-condemned house, it’s scary!/when she enters to find an old world funeral with drinking and gambling followed by a series of events that leads to Ganush’s comically dead body tumbling down on Cathrine with torrents of green embalming fluid flooding into her mouth… it’s, yeah, funny as hell.  Okay, so the film isn’t “smart” in what it says (the notion that the true horror banks and their ability to ruin lives worse than any monster is entirely tangentle) or even what it shows on the surface (Lohman is not some feminist icon but a simple girl from a farm) but it is smart in it’s approach which, as I mentioned, is half way between a parody and the darkest of horror films. That ”Saw” underperformed financially while another dozen ”Saw” films are right down the road shows me how deprived/depraved this genre is.

Grade: A-