Bank foreclosures are a serious problem in our country right now.  Look down any street and you may see a “For Sale by Bank” sign on the lawn.  This is where our troubled economy has hit closest to home. Houses on our blocks are being foreclosed and banks are seizing them. When residents try to save their homes by asking banks for a mortgage extension, they are denied.  People hate banks because of this and rightfully so.  Forced to lose ownership of anything would anger anyone.  Of course, banks are just doing their job, right? In Sam Raimi’s new film, Drag Me to Hell, Sylvia Ganush (Lorna Raver) has the same problem.

She is a sick, elderly, gypsy woman from Eastern Europe.  She has owned her house for 30 years and it is in danger of being foreclosed because she can’t work due to her illness.  She has been approved for two extensions in the past and is asking for a third.  She is not the most attractive of old women either. Actually, she’s pretty hideous.  She has disgusting yellow dagger-shaped fingernails, she coughs up green ooze, her hair is a mess, she has staples in her forehead, her dentures are also yellow and rotting away and her right eye looks diseased. She is one of the most freakish-looking characters since Charlize Theron’s Aileen in Monster.  Assisting her is Christine Brown (Alison Lohman), a good-hearted loan officer, who is trying to impress her boss enough to get promoted to assistant manager at the bank.  Her competitor, Stu Rubin (Reggie Lee), a two-faced butt-kisser, is also shooting for the position.  Christine, who wants to grant Mrs. Ganush an extension, asks her boss, Mr. Jacks (David Paymer) for advice.  He says she has been approved twice and a third one is too much, but leaves the decision up to Christine.  Christine wants to make the “tough choice” to show she can handle a potential manager job and she rejects Mrs. Ganush.  Ganush goes crazy.  She first begs on her hands and then approaches Christine in a forceful manner.  She is apprehended by security and escorted from the bank.  After work, the old hag attacks Christine while she is starting up her car.  Ganush, who manages to get into Christine’s car, starts to wrestle while it’s driving.  This sets up one of the more comical elements of the film.  While wrestling with Christine, Ganush’s dentures fall out, but she still proceeds to bite her despite not having any teeth. Yes, the movie is very funny and this is Raimi’s signature style with horror movies.  After the fight, Ganush manages to rip a button off of Christine’s coat and casts an evil curse on it.  Since Christine is the owner of the button, she is now cursed.

Christine soon begins to see images of a goat-like demon harassing her and since we can’t get enough of the freakish Ganush, a spirit form of her also attacks Christine.  Clay Dalton (Justin Long), Christine’s boyfriend, is a psychology professor and he tries to help with her images.  Long is a seen using Apple products like a Mac and an iPhone.  I found this funny since Long is known for the “Hi, I’m a Mac and I’m a PC” commercials.  I’m suere Raimi did this deliberately to get a few more chuckles. Well, it certainly worked for me, Sam. Christine later seeks counsel from a fortune teller named Rham Jas (Dileep Rao), despite protests from Clay.  Rham tells her that a curse has been set on her and a demon named the Lamia (the goat demon) will drag her to hell in three days.  Christine seeks out Mrs. Ganush to reconcile their feud in hopes of getting her curse lifted.  While at her home, Christine finds out Ganush died while walking into a funeral.  Christine, who is still haunted by the Lamia and Ganush, must find a way to reverse her curse before she is dragged into hell.

Don't let 'em say you ain't beautiful...oh-ohh

I really liked this film and its great to finally see a good horror movie that’s actually original.  Like I mentioned before, this is full of humor.  Some of the more comical moments occur when Christine’s nose is bleeding and it squirts blood all over her boss or when an anvil (yes, an anvil) falls on Mrs. Ganush’s head and her guts spray all over Christine.  Lohman obviously took a lot of abuse from the make-up department, but she played the lead very well.  Her character is not the typical horror heroine who just screams and runs away.  She is tough and seems like she doesn’t take crap from anyone, especially disgusting gypsy ladies.  I really liked the Mrs. Ganush character because she’s so memorable and I commend Lorna Raver for doing a fantastic job of making her ultra creepy.

This will definitely be enjoyable for any non-horror fan since the humor makes the scarier stuff easier to handle.  Raimi needed to do a movie like this since the set-back of Spider-Man 3.  I’m glad he decided to go back to his horror roots and this will certainly put him back on track, even though he’s set to do Spider-Man 4.  I also think Raimi took an underlining shot at the bank systems with the movie.  After all, was the Ganush character really all that evil?  Her home is being taken away and she’s upset at the notion.  The scariest part of the movie is trying to determine if Ganush’s actions were justified.  Probably not, considering she was willing to break the law and impose physical harm on someone.  It wasn’t Christine’s fault that Ganush had her problems and this is where Ganush was evil, by blaming someone else for her issues. I think Ganush was just a victim of the declining economic system and the evil side of her came out.

I’m sure one of us would like to cast an evil spell on an institution or person who’s done us wrong.  That’s what makes this film so brilliant. You get a humorous and entertaining horror story, but you’re still analyzing the message it ambiguously delivers afterward.