How to Watch: “Drag Me to Hell”

6a00d8341bf6c153ef011168fbb671970c-800wiStep 1: Drag yourself to go see this campy, over-the-top horror flick from the skewed brain of Sam Raimi. You won’t regret it.

Step 2: Take this bit of advice: Don’t steal from, shame or piss off a gypsy in any way. Remember this and you should be able to get through life without being cursed and dragged into hell by a demon. Unfortunately for Christine Brown (Alison Lohman), a pretty loan officer working at a small bank, she isn’t offered this advice and thus seals her doom when she denies this old gypsy lady an extension on her mortage payments. Oh yes, all hell does indeed break loose.

Step 3: If a gypsy DOES curse you, fight back! Lohman (Match Men) does a nice job as our tortured soul, who is in turns petrified, bewildered and kick ass when the situation calls for it. Like when she beats the crap out of the old woman, Mrs. Ganush, in her car. Played with relish by Lorna Raver, you gotta wonder if the actress minded looking so horrible, with decaying flesh, rotting fake teeth and hawking yellowish green goo out her mouth. Yuck. Justin Long plays Christine’s hapless boyfriend, who never quite believes that she has only three days of demon torture before being dragged to … well, you know. He finally gets the picture but by then it’s far too late. Christine has some allies, though, namely a psychic (Dileep Rao) and a medium (Adriana Barraza), who try to excise the curse. No such luck.

Step 4: Watch Sam Raimi get his horror groove back. As a director, he has spent many of the last formative years directing all three Spider-Mans, but I think he had been itching to make another scary flick in the vein of his Army of Darkness and infamous Evil Dead series. His style is to put the fun back into the horror genre, with B-movie gross out scenes and laugh-out-loud moments. It’s such a nice change of pace from otherwise torturous movies such as Saw, Hostel and the like.

Level of difficulty in watching Drag Me to Hell: Easy, but through covered eyes. It’ll make you laugh and jump, all at the same time.