It’s not a metaphor, the title of cult-favorite director Sam Raimi’s return to his low-budget roots — sort of — with Drag Me to Hell. I spoil not. The opening sequence of this hard-to-pin-down horror sort-of comedy features a young boy who’s been afflicted with a gypsy curse getting actually dragged to the actual hell by soul-lusting demons, presumbly to suffer for all eternity for a very minor crime. Business is meant here. There’s no fooling around.
This is so we know what’s in store for Raimi’s heroine, mild-mannered bank loan officer Christine Brown (Alison Lohman), now that she has been damned by the same curse. Literally damned, it would appear.
I’ve been a fan of Raimi’s forever, since long before he shot to fame with his big-budget Spider-Man flicks. From the goofy perfection of 1987’s Evil Dead II — which Raimi made for a buck ninety-eight and, presumably, all the hot dogs star Bruce Campbell could eat — to 1990’s Darkman, which presaged the new seriousness with which comic-book movie are approached, to 1998’s A Simple Plan, a grownup dramatic thriller that may well be one of the best movies ever made, Raimi has proved himself to be a fan’s filmmaker. Whether he’s being silly or serious, he makes movies imbued with such a deep love of movies that a big ol’ film geek like myself cannot help but adore him. He’s the kind of filmmaker that intense movie fans always suspect — rightly or wrongly — is just like themselves, and we’d totally discover we’re soulmates if only we could sit and bullshit about movies for a while.
So I think my pal Sam will understand when I admit that immediately after I saw Drag Me to Hell, I succumbed to doubt. I wondered if Hell weren’t Sam Raimi enough. What I mean is, Raimi has always been over-the-top gonzo or deeply earnest and solemn and honest, and I had been expecting Hell to be either one or the other: it was either going to be something that could be described as “what if the Three Stooges made a horror flick?” (as best characterizes Evil Dead II) or downright Shakespearian in its tragedy and insight into human frailty (as A Simple Plan is). And when I saw that Hell is somewhere in the middle, I was flummoxed. Had Raimi gone soft on us? Had he lost his moxie? Had he been seduced by the succubus of Hollywood into watering down his unique vision?
But now that I’ve had time to think about it, I plead for Raimi’s forgiveness. I did not see it, at first — did not see how he is challenging the typical ethics of the modern horror story (he wrote the script with his brother, Ivan). The longer I have to think about Hell, the more it haunts me, and now I suspect that not only is Raimi daring to push the mainstream studio horror movie to a new — and uncomfortable — place, he may even be daring his longtime fans — just like me! hi, Sam! — to come along with him.
My great fear is that while Raimi’s longtime fans may be pleased, after they give this some major brain time (or before, if they’re less reflexively critical than me), Drag Me to Hell may be too subtle for mainstream audiences, who appear to demand torture porn and more overt moralism than this sly story can offer.
It’s like this. Christine Brown: Is there a sweeter, nicer name imaginable for a nice American girl? Is there’s a sweeter, nicer face that could have been attached to Christine Brown than Lohman’s (Beowulf, Where the Truth Lies)? Could more angry-making bullshit be piled on her? Her boss at the bank (David Paymer: Redbelt, Ocean’s Thirteen) treats her like his own personal assistant — fetch his lunch for him, indeed — and then degrades her for not being as hard and as cold as bank-loan-managery calls for. She’s got a sweet, nice, honest, kind, understanding boyfriend in Clay Dalton — a college prof of indeterminate discipline; but, you know: college prof! what could be less threatening? — and he’s played by Justin Long (Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story), whom I know some people find unforgivably smug in those “I’m a Mac” TV commercials, but whom I find simply adorable. It’s almost like Raimi is setting up Christine as the absolutely perfect victim, one who could not possibly deserve the literally hellish treatment she will be subjected to. As if our pity for her could not possible be questioned.
But then there’s this: Though only intermittently distinguished by the gonzo visual style that brought Raimi cult fame (but which was almost entirely absent from his Spider-Man movies), Raimi begins to suggest, in lots of crafty ways, that Christine is perhaps not quite so sweet as she seems. Oh, it’s true, Raimi brings the cinematic crazy in spots in Christine’s tale: after she maltreats (perhaps unforgivably, since she does so to further her own aims) a desperate customer, and has that gypsy curse laid upon her, there comes a sequence — it’s about an attack in her car — that everyone will be talking about as the grandly outrageous highlight of the film.
But it’s more wily, more under-the-table devious, how Raimi hints that Christine might not, in fact, warrant our pity. (This is down to Lohman, too; her performance is virtuoso in how it reflects the character’s lack of understanding about her own ambition and cunning.) We’re used to horror movies in which random characters are punished for genuinely minor infractions — engaging in premarital sex is a a typical “offense,” and indicative of a tediously conventional morality. Christine is clearly quite happily conjugal with supernice Clay, but that’s not why she’s punished here. She’s punished for far more humanistic reasons: for her selfishness, for her lack of compassion.
The more I think about Drag Me to Hell, the more I wonder whether Christine doesn’t deserve to be cursed. Maybe she deserves the torment she suffers. I don’t know that that’s something a horror movie has ever asked us to consider before.
Great, another film I have been wanting to see ever since I came across the trailer. Well, so much the better if the film seems to be good .. will just have to find a way to stomach Lohman..
That sounds suspiciously, um, religious of you, MaryAnn.
Buzz from geeks is good on this one, and I’m extra curious now. But I have to say, I doubt it will do well, because…well as I said, I AM eager to see it, and yet the trailers still look dreadfully dull to me. I can only imagine how ho-hum they look to mainstreamers.
Still, my wife is sadly going to get dragged to see it. (She’s pretty much a geek herself, but I don’t think she ever really ‘got’ Evil Dead…)
**SPOILER ALERT**
the midnight showing was packed. as far as i could tell, everyone was having a blast with this movie. there was a little more audience participation than i can usually tolerate, but it was kinda ok in this case. i don’t remember a sustained audience uproar as energetic as the one that occured when the lamia (sp?) started dancing over the fire. great stuff.
If i shared Raimi’s juvenile sense of gross out humour, i would’ve enjoyed this film a lot more. But what saved this film for me was the way the script celverly kept pushing Christine to do more and more evil things to stay alive.
I give it a 6/10. If you’re an Evil Dead fan, just go ahead and add 3 more points to my rating.
I loved the movie, but don’t see how Christine deserved to be cursed at all.
While it is true that she was not entirely an angel, it is also clear that she was not wholly vile or unredeedmable either. Raimi suggests that she has some compassion and some guilt feelings — she is a vegetarian out of concern or animals and she eventually comes clean to Clay about her actual role in denying the payment extension. And, really, even if she was genuinely selfish, so what? I guess if someone thinks that a person might deserve to be burned and eaten and ripped apart for all of eternity because that person is a bit morally underdeveloped, I guess I don’t know what to say about that judgment.
I thoroughly enjoyed it. Nice to see Raimi getting back to his roots (kinda). The button was a nice “Casting The Runes” touch. The centerpiece act in the house where the medium attempted to break the spell of the lamia was terrific — and reminiscent of “The Devil Rides Out” in its ever heightening sense of foreboding before all Hell broke loose. Of course, you knew Christine wouldn’t get off that easily. Alison Lohman sure was a good sport to allow herself to get slimed left right and center. Could that have something to do with Ellen Page dropping out at the last minute? But where was the obligatory Bruce Campbell cameo?
For once I agree with you. I enjoyed the film. I thought it added the sudden surprise, just enough disturbing/disgusting images, and yet found a way to work in enough humor to make this an excellent horror film. I almost didn’t see it because of the title, thinking it might be a low budget presentation, but I saw how it was certainly appropriate. I consider it a must see and in the theatre atmosphere on the large screen was the best.
In a WNYC interview recently, Raimi said the movie was about the sin of greed, that he thought we were all guilty, and that he wanted his audiences to feel that there are consequences to being greedy. At least that’s what I think he said, I was doing something else at the time, so I may have got it wrong.
I thought this was a fun film, but I thought it was more like plaigerism of his own Evil Dead series than pushing any sort of envelope or horror genre.
This was “Evil Dead 2 Goes to Cali.” Christine is a lot like Ash. Nice, sweet, a little naive, and loves her partner completely. Then a lot of shit goes down and she has to fend for herself. The dancing demons and close-ups of terrifyingly ugly old women is the same as well. It creeps into Army of Darkness territory with all of the one-liners.
I felt like I was watching Alison Lohman (whom I do love) spit out lines that were meant originally for Bruce Campbell, who would have rocked them better.
I also thought all of the grossness was simply compensation for the fact that it was PG13 instead of rated R.
It was a rollicking good time like an amusement park ride, but hardly anything new since he mined his own films. But I will say that I found it particularily redeeming that the movie did test the bounderies of Christine’s character in a way that most horror movies or any films do not. She was an average woman. I think most of us might have been tempted to spare our jobs over someone else.
She wasn’t a bad woman but she wasn’t exactly a good woman either and that was the most interesting part of the film.
Saw this last night. Had some thoughts. Lets look at this from a more fiscally conservative view. A gypsy gets in over her head on a house she ultimately can’t afford. Begs a loan officer for a third extension on the house (it isn’t really hers as she hasn’t paid if off). She’s an obvious credit risk with her health issues. Any reasonable loan officer would have turned her down. When things don’t go her way, the gypsy blames the loan officer for “shaming” her (the gypsy won’t take responsibility for adequately planning for her future). As a result of not able to steal from the bank, the gypsy proceeds to stalk, terrorize and ultimately murder a young woman just doing her job. The gypsy has a powerful weapon and uses it for her own very selfish purposes. I’d like to know what happens to HER soul.
In other words, no, I don’t think Christine deserved her fate. What does it say about God for letting it happen too? The story was about as tragic as being gunned down by a gangster just because you got in their way (though now you have to spend eternity in hell because fate is unimaginably cruel).