We’ve been waiting a long time for Sam Raimi to return to the horror genre. There was The Gift back in 2000 but we’ll turn a blind eye to that and say he hasn’t done a real horror film since the anarchic horror comedy Army of Darkness, the third part of the Evil Dead series. It was 1981 when The Evil Dead first catapulted Raimi to success and his direction was unique, innovative and memorable. There are echoes of the Evil Dead in Drag Me To Hell and it is easily the best horror film I’ve seen in recent years.

The action kicks off with a young boy being dragged to hell in front of his sister after stealing a necklace from a gypsy. A shadowy demon tears through their house and attacks the family before knocking the boy over a balcony and dragging him down into a fiery pit which tears open in the floor.

After this exciting opening we cut to the modern day and meet Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) a hard working professional at a bank. She is struggling to get a promotion and so when she is left to decide whether to enact the repossession notice an old gypsy woman has been served she chooses the dark side hoping to win favour by increasing profit. To say the gypsy woman takes it badly would be the understatement of the century and later in the underground car park she attacks Christine in one of the best creepy and comic fight sequences ever filmed.

The upshot is Christine has been cursed and her attempts to avoid being dragged to hell are the subject of the rest of the film. Raimi directs this beautifully blending live action and CG to create scenes which are both chilling and hilarious. He also weaves in a few crowd pleasing jumps which should have you leaping off the couch.

The pace is terrific and the action doesn’t let up for the full running time. This is anarchic stuff and there are plenty of gross out sequences. The funeral scene is especially funny. For people who’ve never seen the Evil Dead the blend of hilarity and gross out horror may surprise, for fans this is pure fun.

Raimi is used to big budgets now and the level of polish applied here is top class. The effects are clearly expensive and a far cry from his beginnings. The high production values may detract from the charm that his early work had and there is no doubt Drag Me To Hell isn’t as risky. He also uses a couple of loud scares and the soundtrack is slightly annoying with very quiet dialogue and then booming sound to shock you but these are minor complaints.

It is great to see Raimi making horror again and he easily outdoes the competition. You can blend horror, gross out comedy and thrills into a satisfying movie and you don’t need torture porn to do it. For all the attempts to recapture the brilliance of Evil Dead over the years only the original director can come close to the same mood.