Today I took in Drag Me To Hell, the long-awaited return to horror for Director Sam Raimi. It’s an original film that he wrote with his brother, Ivan. Let me out myself as a fan of Raimi’s earlier horror productions, specifically the Evil Dead “trilogy.” The movies are scary and funny which makes for a great movie. Well, Drag Me To Hell, is a fantastic addition to his catalog. A brief synopsis (which in no way does the movie justice):

Alison Lohman is Christine Brown, a loan officer up for a promotion at a bank. She is kind and her boss sees this as a weakness, saying she needs to make “the tough decisions.” Well one such opportunity arises in the form of an elderly woman applying for an extension on her loan. She denies the request and in turn is attacked by the elderly woman, who after a long fight does something mysterious and basically curses Christine. The rest of the movie is a descent into madness for Miss Brown as she tries to outsmart her curse.

The results are exciting, riveting, often hysterical, and definitely worth your 99 minutes. The thing that stands out for me is how visceral many of the special effects were. It felt like I was watching a much older (and I mean that in a good way) movie. The computer effects were more than fine, but what really got me was the prop effects that were so classic and in this day and age seemingly out of place. I could not have been happier with them though. There is a scene involving cake which is wholly unsettling and Blogger: pop ramblings – Create Posthilarious at the same time.

Movies like this are few and far between in this day and age, that being actually good horror films. If you go to a horror movie these days, you’re most likely seeing a remake or re-imagining of something that’s come before or a slasher flick that you’ve figured out 10 minutes in. This movie doesn’t fit into either of these categories and because of that, it’s extremely refreshing. It also keeps the scares coming from minute 1 to minute 99. I’m not a huge fan of horror, but I enjoy a good fright as much as anyone else If you’re looking for a good scare combined with some hilarious laughs, look no further than Drag Me To Hell. I encourage you to go see it in theaters if at all possible because we need to support movies like this so Hollywood will greenlight more ones like it.

I’d give it 8.5/10.