Drag Me to Hell: Critic Reviews

Going back to his roots, Raimi has made the most crazy, fun, and terrifying horror movie in years.

At a time when horror is defined by limp Japanese retreads or punishing exercises in pure sadism, Drag Me to Hell has a tonic playfulness that's unabashedly retro, an indulgent return to Mr. Raimi's goofy, gooey roots.

Raimi is a master at maintaining a particular type of cinematic tone: scary without being unwatchable, and revolting without losing wit.

Drag Me to Hell is unlike any scary thriller in a while: frightening, frenzied and fun.

As in the best horror movies, Drag Me to Hell keeps the audience on the edge of hysteria throughout, so that every thump sets the heart racing and every joke earns a slightly out-of-control laugh.

Raimi succeeds at giving literal moviemaking a good name, while providing diabolic catharsis for many a disgruntled homeowner.

Raimi, ever the engineer, takes pleasure in screwing with audience identification, shifting between collaboration and contempt for our heroine.

Drag Me to Hell is an eyeball-gouging lesson in how to make a genre flick and live to tell about it.

It's the work of a filmmaker once again drunk on the daffy possibilities of horror filmmaking -- and determined to share that joy with his fans.

Raimi's made this "Drag" a race, designed to chill you, thrill you and give you an excuse to clutch your date's arm with each of the many jolts and jumps it delivers as it twists and turns to the finish line.

Truly, this is manna from hell.

Drag Me to Hell is a sometimes funny and often startling horror movie. That is what it wants to be, and that is what it is.

This hellaciously effective B-movie comes with a handy moral tucked inside its scares, laughs and Raimi's specialty, the scare/laugh hybrid. Moral: Be nice to people.

The biggest howls involve the delicate heroine helplessly ingesting or inhaling bugs, worms, and bile--physical equivalents of her destructive emotions--and Raimi ends the story with the sort of black punch line that's become his signature.

With the same twisted humor Raimi displayed in Evil Dead and Army of Darkness, his Drag Me to Hell is wickedly jolly and disturbingly frightening -- often at the same time.

The characters are solid, the shocks are grab-your-heart-medicine scary, the story glides from twist to twist with diabolical grace. And it's damned funny.

Going gloriously over the top, Raimi simply aims to make us laugh and scare the pants off us, and he hits the mark on both fronts.

The true test of any successful horror flick is how wretched it makes you feel. At the very least, it should inspire a banquet of dread or offer a canape of anxiety. After Drag Me to Hell you won't mind walking home alone.

Scant of plot and barren of subtext, the pic is single-mindedly devoted to pushing the audience's buttons, and who better than Raimi to do the honors?

Drag Me to Hell is pure cheese. Goat cheese.

Raimi sure-handedly blends thrills with giggles in this old-fashioned, newfangled, over-the-top hair-raiser.

Apart from the evocative title, which is a great nod to '50s drive-in fare, the film is as predictable as a meal beneath the golden arches.

An unabashedly schlocky, expertly executed blend of jack-in-the-box jolts and humour.

The looseness Raimi allows himself here results in an especially joyous kind of filmmaking, the sort where the filmmaker's delight in scaring us (and making us laugh) becomes part of the movie's fabric.

Parts of it are entertaining, although I'm not convinced they're enjoyable entirely for the reasons intended by the filmmakers.