“Drag Me To Hell” may just be the movie Sam Raimi has been waiting his whole career to make. Raimi is one of those directors who has vision to spare, with an off-kilter visual aesthetic and an expert understanding of how terror and comedy so often overlap. But he’s always been forced to make concessions, whether due to budget limitations, studio pressure or both. That’s why, as awesome as “The Evil Dead” is, it still feels like a rough draft when compared to “Evil Dead II,” and why other Raimi classics like “Darkman” and “Army of Darkness” are almost-but-not-quite what the director had in mind. 

But after spending nearly a decade making the “Spider-Man” franchise an enormous box-office success, Raimi finally has the clout, money and studio backing to make a big-budget horror flick exactly the way he wants. “Drag Me to Hell” is about as perfect a distillation of Raimi’s film-making talent as you can get, a tight 90-minute haunted house ride that’s hilariously scary and terrifyingly hilarious. It’s what Raimi was shooting for all along with the “Evil Dead” series, but without the fetters of production costs and studio meddling. “Drag Me to Hell” is Raimi’s full-on, uncompromising return to horror, and it’s awesome.

No one is safe in “Drag Me to Hell,” a fact that Raimi establishes immediately during a flashback to 1969, when a young boy, who made the mistake of stealing a gypsy necklace, is very graphically dragged down into the underworld. Four decades later, bank loan officer Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) finds herself facing a similar fate. After refusing to grant a loan extension to the elderly Mrs. Ganush (Lorna Raver), Christine is cursed. Stalked by a demon called the Lamia, Chrstine’s soul is due to be carted off to the fiery depths in three days’ time. But even before that terrible fate befalls her, the Lamia torments, tortures and terrorizes Christine everywhere she goes.

Raimi is known for abusing his actors and in “Drag Me To Hell,” Lohman suffers abuse and violence on par with the grueling ordeals Bruce Campbell went through as Ash in the “Evil Dead” films. Thrown into furniture, her hair ripped out, her face gummed and slobbered on by a toothless old woman, Lohman is subjected to all sorts of maltreatment. Lohman is a champ, though, and watching her character transform from a meek, uncomfortable girl to an ass-kicking woman ready to take control of her fate is one of the many pleasures of “Drag Me to Hell.” When she growls that she’s going to “get some” revenge (a nod to one of Ash’s famous lines in “Army of Darkness”), by God, you believe it.

But even at the most brutal moments, Raimi slips in some slapstick. Christine takes a real beating at the hands of Mrs. Ganush during an early scene in a parking garage, but just when things get really physical, the old lady’s dentures fly out and she begins a mad effort to gum off Christine’s chin. Later on, Christine uses an anvil to get the better of her demon attacker in a scene that’s straight out of a Three Stooges short.

The Stooges are a huge influence on Raimi, but so is Hitchcock and the Universal monster movies of the 1950s, and those elements are here, too. Raimi keeps the audience on a short leash throughout the film. Tension builds to an almost unbearable level, and just as you start to relax, the film pounces with a perfectly-timed jump scare that even the most jaded horror fans will fall for. Raimi uses his usual camera techniques—push-pull shots, frenetic POV-shots of flying objects, and slowly-tilting camera angels—to keep the audience off balance. He also uses sound to full effect. Tiny sounds, like the buzzing of a fly, presage huge scares while chaotic cacophonies amp up the tension and further overwhelm the audience. It’s the sort of movie that you need to see in a theater (or with a tricked-out home theater system) in order to get the full effect.

There’s no shortage of gore, either, and it’s amazing how Raimi ended up getting a PG-13 rating for a movie in which children, the elderly and small animals are all equally terrorized and covered in demon vomit. But all that gross stuff is just gruesome, maggot-filled gravy on top of the artfully constructed scares Raimi creates.

“Drag Me To Hell” delivers the goods in just about every way possible, and it’s tempting to peg the film as Raimi’s big comeback. It’s not—this is the sort of movie he’s been working toward for years, and even the “Spider Man” films bear his indelible stamp. But “Drag” is Raimi at the top of his game, tightly scripted and funny and scary as hell. Raimi’s slated to return to the “Spider Man” franchise for a fourth outing; let’s just hope it doesn’t take him another decade to make something as killer as “Drag Me to Hell.”