Review: Drag Me To Hell

REVIEW
Hack. Slash. Scream. Smash. Chop. Chop. Yawn.

Even a genre as murderous as horror can get boring.

Sometimes you need an old gypsy to jam her whole arm down a woman's throat to bring the magic back

Thankfully, Evil Dead director Sam Raimi isn't afraid to roll up his sleeves and hurl all over his audience. On his return to the horror genre, the man who made Bruce Campbell a cult hero turns Drag Me To Hell into a glorious goulash of shocks, laughs and enough ugly fluids to turn the Sahara into a beachside hotspot. Just don't swim in the water, folks.

Drag Me To Hell is quite simple in itself, almost to the point where you suspect the plot cookie cutter has been slipped out of Hollywood's cutlery drawer again. The likeable Alison Lohman plays an ambitious loan officer that refuses to show mercy on an old gypsy being evicted from her home, and as a result finds herself slapped with a curse that will drive her into the clutches of a demonic goat boy in three days.

Thus, the battle lines are drawn. In the red corner, there's a ancient, cackling evil from the dark pit where souls burn for all eternity. In the blue, there's a slightly jumpy fortune teller, a bank employee and a college professor called Clay.

And yet it's not terrible. In fact, it's a sneering, fang-toothed, vomiting imp of cinematic exhilaration.

So what's different? What makes this tale of beauty versus the beast stand proud in a room full of trash like Prom Night and House of Wax, scything the competition down with a blood-soaked lawnmower and laughing like a moon-eyed fiend?

Mostly, it's the fact that it bothers to laugh at all.

Great horror taps into the deep-seated terror of the world, its fear of assimilation, mutilation and the thing that lurks under the bed. But it's also a great big, delirious, ridiculous thing, wallowing in its perversity like a kid burning the limbs off insects. People forget that the devil always had a eye for a trick and a sense of black humour.

"Torture porn" like Saw and Hostel may still slice off a significant chunk of the financial pie, and the arachnid babies of Wes Craven's Scream may still be trapping movie-goers in their webs of blondes and masked slashers. But it's all very serious, a mumbling cocktail party of identically-tuxedoed clones, clutching the same bouquet of flowers and the same acceptable wine, demanding your respect not because they're doing something different, but precisely because they're doing exactly the thing that you expect of them.

In the midst of all this glass-clinking and drone-like boredom, Drag Me To Hell actually bothers to enjoy itself, to remind everyone how absolutely ludicrous it all is, and then still turn around and goose you as you're creased with laughter.

It's a movie that absolutely cries out for noise in the audience. There are slurping sound effects and leering close-ups of sludge, girls swallowing tides of insects, a farcical fight with a stapler and even an ancient lady attempting to gum someone into submission after being parted from her rotten falsies.

It's got the crooked smirk of a Tales From The Crypt episode, the malignant humour of The Evil Dead and the sugar-high passion for gore and madness that buzzes in the heart of low-budget movies such as Troma's Terror Firmer. It'll toy with you, cover you with unspeakable gunk, and you'll be laughing along with it every step of the way.

Just don't open your mouth too wide. You never know what will seep into it.

Drag Me To Hell is currently showing at Cineworld West India Quay. For showtimes and booking go here.