Drag Me to Hell

Drag Me to Hell (2009)

Director: Sam Raimi

Cast: Alison Lohman, Justin Long, Lorna Raver, Dileep Rao, David Paymer

I'm not a big fan of Sam Raimi's movies, even though Drag Me to Hell is one of my all-time favorite horror movies. It's the sort of movie I recommend to friends and family members, even ones who don't necessarily like horror,  and when I recommend it, I usually spout out Sam Raimi's name to establish their trust that a well-regarded filmmaker is behind it.

The other night, I returned home very late after attending a 4-hour opera at the Met (I know) with little time to kill before I managed 5 hours of sleep before work the next morning. I opened my browser to Hulu, since Hulu always delivers something engaging (I could go on and on about Hulu's excellent Criterion collection). I guess Hule was helping promote the release of the new Evil Dead remake because the first suggestion on the screen was Raimi's original. 

Now, I saw the original Evil Dead in college about a thousand years ago, most likely among a big group of people, as co-eds often do. I don't remember much about it except that everyone at the time considered it "campy fun", almost like something you have to watch for the hell of it. But when I watched Evil Dead again the other night, I absolutely detested it. So over-hyped! So slow to get going and so exploitative and silly once it's on the right track. The tree raping scene is horrendous and gross, and it's neither scary nor provocative; it exists solely for the sake of existing, which is a quality of cinema I hate more than anything.  The only good thing about Evil Dead is 1) it made me ponder the nature of horror remakes and 2) it reminded me of Cabin in the Woods, which is an awesome movie. Watching the Evil Dead became so tedious that I decided to clean my kitchen before bed (I'm cool like that).

But Drag Me to Hell is a different story. I first saw Drag Me to Hell while introducing my partner to my Uncle and Aunt who live very far away in San Antonio, along with their daughter and her new husband. You'd think this would be an awkward film choice for a long-distance family reunion, but on the contrary, it was the perfect choice. There is something very family-friendly and benign about this bloody horror morality tale; shockingly, something that perhaps all of us can enjoy. 

Christina Brown (a wonderful Alison Lohman, where are you now?) lives a normal, run of the mill life as a young woman trying to create her own piece of happiness and success as a loan officer at a run-of-the-mill bank. Her male boss (Davd Paymer) and kiss-ass co-worker boss her around, and like most of us, she sucks it up in hopes that it will pay off with a big promotion and subsequent respect. She is dating a super nice guy (Justin Long, who I loved in Jeepers Creepers), but his parents are bitches, and she overhears him on the phone with his mom, who criticizes her, only adding fuel to her desire to excel at work.  

So one day this old gypsy-esque woman named Mrs. Ganush (Lorna Raver) comes in requesting an extended loan to keep her house. If she isn't granted the loan, she will have no place to live, and she pleads with Christina to grant her an extension. Christina consults with her boss, who tells her "you make the call". Christina knows the morally right thing to do is give the old woman the loan, but in a single, split-minute decision (not unlike the many we take for granted day to day) she rejects the woman, who falls to her knees begging, and ultimately gets security to kick the old hag out of the office. 

It's not like the Ganush is some benevolent granny-figure; in fact, she's a ruthless bitch who violently attacks Christina in her car, steals a button off her coat, and curses her to a demon who will torment the poor girl for days until she is dragged off to hell. In this respect, Christina is an innocent woman who just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. But that's not quite the truth either. Ultimately, it was her decision to not do the charitable, morally right thing, something she acknowledges later. But for every bad decision, we must pay a price, in one way or another.

At the heart of Drag Me to Hell is the recognition that hidden beneath our mundane lives (and her life is certainly very mundane) is the possibility of grave and eternal consequences. Christina begins experiencing horrible demonic visions which increase in severity, including a grotesque nose-bleed at work, and culminating in her being thrashed around her house like a rag doll. She consults in an non-cliched psychic figure (the sleep-expert guy from Inception, played by a slightly miscast Dileep Rao) who informs her that the nature of the curse is in the form of a super-powerful and especially evil demon called the Lamia. At one point, Christina capriciously decides to stab her beloved kitten to death as a sacrifice, anything to keep the terrifying demon at bay. 

The film's best scene involves a dangerous seance held by a highly skilled medium, who dies in the process. We learn that the Lamia will not quit until Christina is dead. Her only choice (why didn't anyone tell her this to begin with?) is to transfer the cursed button to another person, damning them to hell in her place. Unfortunately for her, this is another moral dilemma. Who should she give it to? She almost gives it to her ass-kissing co-worker, until her conscience gets the best of her. In the end, she decides to visit the old gypsy woman's grave-site , and shoves the button in her corpse's mouth. She has made her decision, and its apparent benefit is two-fold: save her own soul and damn the soul that cursed her.

In the end, this fails as well, in a most clever manner (be careful on train platforms, folks) leaving the viewer with two blatant lessons to take away from this cautionary saga. Lesson One: we can not escape the consequences of our actions. In fact we can't even repent! Nothing can save us once we have chosen the wrong path. Lesson Two: Choosing revenge, like the revenge Christina chooses to enact against the Mrs. Ganush, never pays off. In fact, it only leads to false hope. Christina would have been better off just accepting her fate in the first place. She should have just hollered "Drag me to hell!" and been done with it.

And that my friends, is how you make a good horror film. 

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