DVD Pick: Drag Me to Hell

Drag Me to Hell - director Sam Raimi's highly anticipated return to horror - explodes onto the screen in very fine form. In a nod to older works (including his own Evil Dead franchise), Raimi opens with a vintage Universal logo as a stylistic and tonal indicator. This is a an adrenaline fueled roller coaster ride of a horror piece that is committed to hard scares and good fun and has absolutely nothing (NOTHING) to do with tourists who get lost in Europe and end up having viking milkmaids skin them alive to drink their blood. It is truly of a different, pre-Saw and even pre-Scream era in which sadistic torture and ultra-ironic audience nods are altogether out of the equation. Point of order: Sam Raimi and brother Ivan penned the script in 1993 and then shelved it for all these years. Thankfully, the piece was not lost completely. Drag Me to Hell is some of the most masterful pulp of this or any decade and bears no shame for its commitment to a passe style. In fact, if all is right in the world, Drag Me to Hell will make what is old new again. I'd gladly see a dozen more Raimi-like low-camp high-chill romps than any number of Hostel-like abuse tomes.