I haven't laughed this hard since "Evil Dead II". Which is fitting considering both are from the same director, Sam Raimi. Oh, sure, "Drag Me To Hell" has all the trappings of a suspenseful horror movie, all the gross-out, all the ancient occultism, all the scary soundtracks. What makes "Drag Me To Hell" excellent to watch, however, is the canny self-parody, the feeling that you know the characters are aware of their medium and are purposefully playing a joke on the audience with a wink and a nod in much the same fashion as a stage magician.
Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) makes the age old, though understandable, mistake of angering a witch through the everyday hubris of being a loan officer at a bank. For the crime of not extending her mortgage payments, the witch gives Christine three days before she is dragged to hell by the demon Lamia. As the curse gets progressively more difficult to contain, Christine and her boyfriend Clay (Justin Long) must consult a psychic, and later a medium who has dealt with Lamia before, to remove her curse before time runs out. The problem is, the more Christine struggles against her curse and gets more gore and dirt dumped on her and vomited into her mouth or eyes or whatever is convenient, the further she drags herself into the grip of the powers fighting for her soul.
The best part, honestly, is how tight the movie is. Nothing is shown that isn't used. The ending makes total sense, but it is presented as such an out of left field shock, the vomit or the bugs or the worse that is sprayed all over the main character is comparable to the ending. This is a movie that goes so overboard on the occultism and gore, then kicks all the wacky grossness into an incinerator at the end in one final attempt at nuking anything resembling subtlety. You are not buying a psychological horror movie when you get "Drag Me To Hell". You're buying a blowtorch with which to cauterize any weakness you might have to psychological horror movies.
WATCH IF YOU LIKE: Blondes Getting Expectorated Upon, Nonsensical Occult Horror, Bad People Losing
SKIP IF YOU DISLIKE: Gore, Horror That Doesn't Take Itself Seriously, A Total Lack of Subtlety
FINAL VERDICT: Buy if you liked the "Evil Dead" series (since this is pretty much a Bruce Campbell-less version of the same thing), Rent otherwise.
IMDB's entry on "Drag Me To Hell".
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