"Arrástrame al infierno/Drag Me To Hell", de Sam Raimi (crítica)

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"Drag Me To Hell", de Sam Raimi (The Independent)

By Anthony Quinn

Either by accident or design Sam Raimi's delightfully named thriller has caught the era of economic mismanagement and popular retribution down to a ghoulish T.

Drag Me to Hell presents the spectacle of a banker being cursed, half-strangled, vomited upon, pinged around a room like a Lotto ball, surprised by an eyeball in a slice of cake, threatened with eternal hellfire and – poetic justice here – ripped off by a pawnbroker. Audiences may find it difficult at times to suppress a cheer. Or a nervous belly laugh, come to that, because its moments of Grand Guignol, repulsive and obscene as they are, also give the funny bone a good tweak.

Yet the grotesque punishment meted out to the banker hasn't quite the cathartic frisson you might expect. For one thing, Christine Brown is only a humble loans officer at a bank, where her manager has warned her that she'll only clinch that promotion if she shows herself capable of making "tough decisions". For another, she is played by Alison Lohman, whose sweetly innocent face make her look as if she might have Hannah Montana posters on her bedroom wall (she's actually 30 this year). In any case, that tough decision comes her way when a witchy looking crone with one eye and fingernails of nicotine brown stops by her desk to ask for an extension on her mortgage payments. Her name is Mrs Ganush, but she might as well be called Mrs Lugosi, such is her terrifying mittel-European strangeness. Christine, mindful of the promotion, refuses her request, then looks mortified when the old woman gets down on her knees to beg. It all ends rather unpleasantly when Christine has to call security and the outraged client, her home lost to foreclosure, is ejected.

But the word "unpleasant" doesn't cover what happens next: Christine is attacked in her car by the vengeful Mrs Ganush, a scene that brings out all of Raimi's inventive grotesquerie. Who else would think of an old biddy losing her dentures as she moves in to bite her foe, and ends up slobbering over Christine's face with her toothless maw. In a word: ugh. The upshot of this savage tussle is Mrs Ganush tearing off a button from Christine's coat and calling down a Gypsy curse that will see her dragged to hell by an avenging demon named the Lamia. Don't you just hate it when that happens?

With swift despatch, Christine starts to suffer the kind of unearthly ordeal that Raimi last visited on Bruce Campbell in his Evil Dead movies. A nosebleed at work turns into a veritable spray-painting of her office and (doh!) her boss ("Did any of it get in my mouth?" he bleats). A polite dinner at the house of boyfriend Justin Long's mum and dad puts Meet the Parents to shame for look-away-now humiliation. The pots and pans in her kitchen begin a ghost dance, then she's pursued up to her bedroom and bounced from floor to ceiling by an invisible tormentor.

Does Christine really deserve such a fate? In Raimi's pitiless scheme of things "deserve" has got nothing to do with it. One thinks of poor Bill Paxton finding the stolen loot in A Simple Plan – Raimi's most accomplished and grown-up movie – and bringing catastrophe down on himself for daring to keep it. Christine seems to have been singled out from the start: the opening shot shows her driving along the freeway in a green car, which every screenwriter in Hollywood knows is an ill-starred colour. She is patronised in the workplace, and hides a troubled family background. The curse fell on her for a momentary error of judgment, not because she's a bad person. And the more we feel sorry for her, the worse things get. Desperation drives her to a back-street seer (Dileep Rao), whose first bit of advice is that she sacrifice a beloved animal. "I'm a vegetarian!" she protests, insisting that there are some things she just won't do. Comes the seer's chilling reply: "You'll be surprised what you'll be willing to do when the Lamia comes for you." Yikes! In a superb comic swerve Raimi cuts to Christine at home, calling out for her pet kitten with a curious edge in her voice.

Raimi, who crossed over to big-budget respectability with the Spider-Man franchise, crosses right back here to deliver something that's cheap, nasty and rather magnificent. The peals of horrified laughter that Drag Me to Hell provokes will be music to his ears. Even as the film gets seriously spooky, you can't help picking up a discordant note of farce.

To be honest, this fright-fest might have rattled us more had Lorna Raver, as the egregious Mrs Ganush, not disappeared so early. It's one thing to be stalked by a shadow demon crawling up nostrils; but it's not half so scary as a one-eyed witch who pops up from the back seat of a car and tries to strangle you. I reared so suddenly in my own seat at that moment I almost got whiplash. Hang on to your arm-rests – this film will give you a jolt.

"Drag Me To Hell", de Sam Raimi (Screen)

Dir: Sam Raimi. US. 2009. 99 mins.

Clearly delighting in a return to his roots, Sam Raimi downshifts from the billion-dollar Spider-Man franchise with Drag Me to Hell, a slickly made, engaging horror film that evokes the spirit of much of the director’s early work, particularly the Evil Dead series. Mixing different modes of horror storytelling with dark touches of humour, Raimi proves here that gore isn’t necessary for a cathartic horror-thrill ride.

Raimi’s name should pull in some Spider-Man fans, but those unfamiliar with the humour of his early work will likely feel baffled by how much Drag Me to Hell differs from current teen-baiting horror fare. Still, mid-eight-figure grosses seem certain, outstripping the returns of similar genre hybrids such as Slither and Cabin Fever.

Los Angeles loan officer Christine Brown (Lohman) has a good life; she’s happy with her boyfriend, Clay Dalton (Long), a young professor at a nearby college, and seems to have the inside track on a promotion. In an effort to impress upon her boss (Paymer) that she can make tough-minded decisions with an eye on the bottom line rather than human compassion, Christine denies a third extension on the home mortgage of an old woman (Raver), which means certain foreclosure.

Feeling that she has been shamed, the woman viciously attacks Christine after work in the parking lot and places a curse on her. A spooked Christine consults with psychic Rham Jas (Rao), and learns the specifics of the gypsy curse: that she will be tormented for three days by a spirit which will eventually come to claim her soul. Increasingly panicked attempts to alter that destiny ensue.

Drag Me to Hell trades in an aggressive sound mix and plenty of conventional horror signifiers — creaking windows and wind-slammed garden gates, mewing cats and clattering pans. But the movie also shows a smart sense of construction.

Working from a script with his brother Ivan, a frequent collaborator, Raimi seeds his story with alternately small and amusing details (farmgirl Christine used to be overweight, which quietly feeds her insecurity and anxiety over being accepted by Clay’s rich parents) that help give the movie the feeling of an anchored drama. Overall, the emphasis is definitely on the thrills and horror, but comedic notes are interwoven throughout as well.

Raimi also proves himself to be a master manipulator of genre mood, efficient with effects both practical and computer-generated. Ominous shadow play and a handful of low-angle tracking shots are intermingled with other trademark Raimi flourishes, like his resurrected fetish for wildly over-the-top, hand-to-hand violence perpetrated by and against seemingly possessed old ladies. These low-fi sequences help give the film’s artificial visual effects greater punch and value.

While Drag Me to Hell is rated PG-13 in the US, it’s unlikely that most horror buffs will feel cheated. The director gleefully dispenses with the usual sacred cows (neither children nor kittens are safe), and also leans on wild gross-out moments to goose his audience. There are effusive sprays of slimy phlegm and vomit, as well as one comedic blood-gushing sequence, all of which would make Monty Python’s Mr. Creosote proud.

If there’s a problem, it’s that the film doesn’t quite feel tethered enough to a forceful personality, as with Bruce Campbell’s Ash in the Evil Dead movies. This is mitigated slightly by a final 30 minutes in which Christine becomes more assertive.

Lohman brings a steadying presence to the picture, while Long nicely balances sympathetic assistance and confused ambivalence at watching his girlfriend mentally unravel. It’s the disgustingly made-up Raver, though, who steals the show, guaranteeing that viewers will think twice about speaking ill of old women taking too long to cross the street.

"Drag Me To Hell", de Sam Raimi (Promedio: 6,60) En baja

Sección Oficial - Fuera de competencia

Rudiger Suchsland (Frankfurter Allgemeine, Germany) - 5
Diego Batlle (La Nación, Otroscines, Argentina) - 8
Christoph Hüber (Die Presse, Austria) - 9
Violeta Kovacsics (Lumiere, España) - 7
Pamela Bienzobas (Mabuse, Chile) - 4

Promedio: 6,60