Drag Me to Hell
by Nick PinkertonDirector Sam Raimi defaults to the horror romps that made his name (the Evil Dead trilogy). Playing a bank loan officer, Alison Lohman bears the brunt of this film's supernatural humiliations. Lohman's Christine Brown is putting the finishing touches on her self-reinvention as a young professional: eye on a promotion, renting hillside real estate in Los Angeles, and heading toward marriage with an upmarket boyfriend. One day, smothering her conscience to impress her boss, Christine refuses to take pity on an ancient Gypsy woman about to lose her home (Lorna Raver, with a malevolent dead eye). The woman hisses a hex, and Christine's life plan is derailed by a chain of diabolical interventions. A visit to a psychic confirms that Christine has had a demon sicced on her, and, if it isn't appeased in time, she'll get the title treatment. Still, her getting bonged on the head with a cross for forgetting the Golden Rule doesn't indicate a particularly nuanced moral vision. Does Raimi — who began his career on a shoestring in the Tennessee woods and now commands $300 million bonanzas — actually believe professional ambition should be punished with eternal damnation?
Comments (0)