Drag Me to Hell

Spider-Man director Sam Raimi returns to his Evil Dead roots in this yucky, energetic and consistently entertaining fright movie. It's a glorious throwback to the EC comics horror tradition of the 1950s, in which young mortgage broker Christine (Alison Lohman) becomes the victim of a curse after evicting glassy-eyed crone Lorna Raver from her house. Pursued by a demon, Christine only has three days before she's dragged - you guessed it - to hell. It's pure horror hokum, but the joy lies in the gleefully vindictive execution, as Raimi assaults us with relentlessly manic camerawork and an endless stream of gross-out ickiness (never has so much been regurgitated in the name of entertainment). The director describes it as the cinematic equivalent of a ghost-train ride, and he's right: it's scary, silly and so much fun that you'll want another go the minute it ends.