"This above all: to thine own self be true,....." - Polonius (from the play, Hamlet)

The above quote states what I believe to be the overall moral message of Sam Raimi's, "Drag Me To Hell". Here we have a character, a young woman, who has ambivalent feelings towards herself and where she comes from. Christine's a good person, but feels she has to appease other people, her boss, boyfriend, etc, rather than herself in order to be happy and get ahead in life. This behavior is, ultimately, her downfall. Christine feels the pressure one day and goes against her moral barometer, she denies a sick woman an extension on her mortgage, she "shames" the old lady, and it is this reason she must now suffer a curse. A very deadly curse. In three days time, a demon will come to take her soul and body to hell where she'll suffer for an eternity. The main focus of the film is, of course, her trying to rid herself of this curse by any means necessary. Will she succeed? Go and see it to find out!
I am in no way an avid fan of the horror genre like some, I think most of them suck, but I did enjoy this one. You might even say that I enjoyed it more than the directors previous horror films, "Evil Dead", "Evil Dead 2", and "Army of Darkness". One of the successes of this movie is that I actually sympathized and cared about the main character, Christine. And for a film to have any real impact it's important to feel for a character in crisis. Plus, like all of the Sam Raimi movies I've seen over the years, it was very entertaining. I can't deny this. It's loud, very crude, cringe worthy in some parts, obnoxious, and there are a lot of boo scares. You know? Boo scares? They're very popular nowadays.
However, in a horror film, personally, for me, boo scares aren't enough to make a film truly frightening. Something more is required.
This film, basically, just screams in your face in order to try and scare you, but I was never spooked. I personally prefer, and this is rare to find in most modern horror cinema, something a little more creepy, something with a little more subtly that builds up to a truly horrifying experience. This is one flaw I've found in all the Raimi horror movies. There's a lot of shock, but no fear.
Maybe I'm asking for too much though. Sam Raimi is the man behind the hugely successful "Spiderman" franchise, and he's been in the game a long time, so it's safe to say he's got a lot of pull in what projects he chooses to participate in and how they're executed. Apparently Raimi had a different vision of how this movie should be and went forward with that vision. He didn't want the same things I did. I respect that. He's being true to himself as a storyteller and filmmaker, I guess. Polonius would be proud.