Allison Lohman is in top form here, still in her big star days, around that Matchstick Men period. Regarding the film itself, well, this is a roller coaster of funny/horror-Raimi will make you laugh, scream, laugh, scream, in varying orders-and he'll use every cheap, ridiculous, and robustly and artistically designed trick in the book to get you there. A commentary track from Raimi is missing-and there won't be a definitive release until one is recorded. The additional extras are decent, but certainly not exhaustive by any means. While I won't attempt to be too technical here (as I would come off as ignorant on the topic as I am), I will say that this BD brought a nice crisp transfer, along with booming loud sound.
Along with the giddy horror-comedy that bursts out of the movie every 10 minutes or so, there's also an underlying mood of pity: Lohman's character is something of a hard-luck sad sack, who does enough wrong things to make her seem like a truly abject individual, well outside the heroic model of most multiplex offerings. Justin Long plays Lohman's upper-class boyfriend, and Raimi fills the rest of the cast with some unusual and unfamiliar types. A séance, an animal sacrifice, and a session in a storm-tossed graveyard will make the 72 hours pass very nervously, thank you, along with assorted scares. There's even a story: a sad loan officer (Alison Lohman) turns down the aforementioned denture-wearing gypsy for a loan extension, which leads to an evil curse and a date in hell in three days' time.
You got your gypsy gargoyles with rotted dentures, your upchucking corpses, your flexible two-way orifices-yes, Raimi's definitely back in the saddle. Touted as a return to Sam Raimi's horror-movie roots, Drag Me to Hell is indeed closer in spirit to the director's Evil Dead pictures than to his Spider-Man films. Director Sam Raimi (Spider-Man and The Evil Dead Trilogy) returns to the horror genre with a vengeance in the film that critics rave is “the most crazy, fun and terrifying horror movie in years!” (Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly) Now she has only three days to dissuade a dark spirit from stealing her soul before she is dragged to hell for an eternity of unthinkable torment. But when she’s forced to make a tough decision that evicts an elderly woman from her house, Christine becomes the victim of an evil curse.
Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) is on her way to having it all: a devoted boyfriend (Justin Long), a hard-earned job promotion, and a bright future.