Drag Me to Hell

Back in the ’80s, Sam Raimi didn’t own a billion dollars and had never checked to see if Tobey Maguire’s unit was consistently on the same side of his spider suit; instead, he spent his days making cheesy, clever, horror-comedies. These films, with their campy excess and twisty plots, owed a debt to the drive-in cinema of the ’60s, but Raimi’s work was original enough that he wasn’t simply aping that style. Here, Raimi returns to his roots and makes a hilarious, scary and consistently entertaining B-movie. Alison Lohman plays the world’s whitest loan officer. When she denies an extension to a Gypsy woman, she’s cursed with an evil button that causes dark spirits to arise and make her give up vegetarianism. Seriously. Or comically. Either way, a mélange of mystical Third World people then lead her on a frightening hunt for salvation, and a clever and convoluted plot never fails to entertain. Special props to cinematographer Peter Deming, who gets the joke and makes the lighting work with it.