Release Date: May 29, 2009

(out of 4)

Director Sam Raimi often shoots the horror of "Drag Me to Hell" in daylight, with the exception of a few nighttime scares. This supernatural potboiler goes head-on with Christine, a comely bank loan officer played by Alison Lohman. Heroine Christine is in every scene of the movie following an opening set-up and for most of the time she’s rattled by a curse 24/7. She regrets that she ever crossed a one-eyed gypsy with drooling dentures and hideous warts.

This is a film made with considerable technical prowess that is propelled by some nimble camera tricks but for some reason doesn’t have any mystery or depth or restraint. Raimi is working in a campy style (he co-wrote with brother Ivan), and he does find humor in both the over-the-top goo as well as Christine’s at-work dilemma where she competes for a promotion (Raimi finds his rare notes of restraint). As a silly and inane lark, Raimi has made a movie that makes “jolts” into a routine, a masquerade for a shallow story.

All-out brawl with the gypsy inside a moving vehicle aside, Christine is hectored most often by whirling leaves, floating handkerchiefs and maybe a hallucinatory vision or two. She only has two resources to run to. Justin Long, who makes his sweetness into something sincere (his character is opposite of his unremittingly snobbish parents), is Christine’s boyfriend Clay Dalton. And Dileep Rao, as palm reader Rham Jas, is Christine’s spiritual advisor who pleads her to sacrifice an animal. Absurd! But it’s a camp movie must. Maybe a $10,000 exorcise the demons ceremony will do the trick. Overpriced! Actually, after it’s over you can begin to understand why psychics require so much money. If you are going to slice and splatter a demonic goat with a machete, you better hit on your first try.

A master at over-the-top hellraising, Raimi (finally off-duty from directing the “Spiderman” films) piles on the synthetic horror tricks with gleeful abandon. Yet he’s trying to also say something about contemporary relationships and business commerce. But by the time Christine vomits blood all over her boss, Raimi shatters all sanity. Especially when boss (David Paymer) forgets about the vomit incident, like a day later. Raimi, in his cult horror roots, got started with the “Evil Dead” movies, and that’s where he should have returned: horror fantasy. The “Evil Dead” phantasmagoria didn’t need to explain itself, but the explanations behind the supernatural occurrences in this movie are poor despite the fact that it’s being laborious about getting you to halfway believe.

Unapologetically, Raimi unleashes the same tricks onto Christine. There is spewing and more spewing in this movie – Christine becomes no stranger to mucous and barf. Repetition gets tiring, but I loved the final scenes of the movie that depend upon bury alive scenario. I am giving the movie two stars because the movie is swamped in clichés and self-inflicts ridiculousness onto itself. But it’s as good a two star movie as any two star movie you’re ever going to find, if that means anything. Raimi fans can start giggling.