Film

We’ve missed you, Sam Raimi. Not that you’ve been AWOL; we know that you’ve spent the past decade making a few keep-a-straight-face attempts at mainstream entertainment (For Love of the Game, The Gift). Plus, there were those mondo blockbusters about a web-slinging superhero—the name escapes us—and you’ve kept megabusy producing remakes of Asian ghost stories. But we hoped that you’d eventually return to the gonzo-gory horror flicks that you pioneered. Y’know, the kind with Gypsy curses, copious bodily fluids and specters that aren’t afraid of a little soft-shoe.

Drag Me to Hell has all of that and more: Raimi’s return to Evil Dead territory is proof that, respectability be damned, he can still whip up a slapstick splatterfest—albeit a PG-13 one—when the mood strikes. Refusing to extend an old crone’s mortgage loan, a bank clerk (Lohman) is destined to suffer demonic retribution (see title) in three days. Which leaves plenty of time for eyeballs popping out of desserts, high-pressurized nosebleeds and a séance that ends with an animatronic possessed goat.