Drag Me to Hell: A Horror Film as Literal as its Title

I remember being a freshman in college and reading Emily Dickenson's masterful poem about a fly. I never looked at a fly the same again. Now there's Sam Raimi's extremely entertaining Drag Me to Hell, which offers up a whole new reason to look at a fly differently. This is exactly what summer movies should be: exciting, unapologetic, genuine, and fun. This is the type of movie I have in mind when I want to go to a movie on a summer afternoon. Like a 90 minute walk through a masterfully constructed funhouse Drag Me to Hell is the most fun I've had at a horror film in a long, long time.

Raimi has a lot of fun with the genre he so obviously loves (and owes a great deal to), and seems so comfortable helming another horror film that Drag Me to Hell could be called Evil Dead 4, with the sweet-faced Alison Lohman (always looking too young for the part, no matter what film she's in) playing the role of Ash, the character made famous by Bruce Campbell in Raimi's Evil Dead series. But more on that later...

The plot is simple, which is the way it should be when you're going to a horror film, and reminded me a lot of the old horror films of the 40's and 50's (I'm thinking specifically of Val Lewton's films and Robert Wise's The Haunting). Christine Brown (Lohman) is a loan manager at a small bank branch. She is jockeying for an Assistant Manage position with a suck up names Stu. In order to impress her bank manager (played by the always great David Paymer) she tries to show him that she can take the initiative on loan cases and prove to him that she has the nerve to turn people down. Unfortunately for Christine her next customer is an old woman named Mrs. Ganush (Lorna Raver) who obviously has some issues and is in desperate need of a third loan or else she'll lose her house.

Despite the initial sweetness of the old woman Christine, trying to make a name for herself, denies the old woman a third loan and this sets off a scene of awkwardness that just spirals into downright lunacy. And I mean that as a compliment. This basically kick starts the plot at Christine is attacked in the parking garage of her business by Mrs. Ganush who steals a button off of Christine's jacket, and proceeds to curse it. What follows are three hellish days of non-stop torment and weird goings-on that are filmed with the glee of a director who seems to be happy and having fun in the genre that made him the star director he is today.

I dare not give away how any of the scenes play out, or the direction the film takes after a weird seance...but I will say that for any fan of the genre (or any astute viewer) you'll catch the clues rather easily; and that's because Raimi makes no qualms about the fact that he's not trying to shock us as viewers, he's just trying to give us a good time. This is a horror film in every sense of what the genre was intended to be: fun, scary, exhilarating, and a good time at the movies. And what a relief that it is for a film of this nature. Too often these days horror directors are overly concerned with shocking the viewer or trying to keep them guessing until the big swerve at the end...which usually just makes us scratch our heads. Raimi and his brother Ivan who helped write the script don't waste any time in the movie: they show you what's going to be scary and what's going to jump out at you, and then they execute the action...brilliantly I might add.

They also create a character in Christine who is perfect for this kind of film. Like Ash, she's an innocent enough person who gets placed smack in the middle of a supernatural world she tries to understand. As I mentioned before this could have been the fourth installment of Evil Dead, with Christine as the Ash character. I love the willingness she displays in going to psychics who exist in those buildings where they know just where to find the book to answer inquiries about animal sacrifices in order to revers a curse. Christine is a flawed person, too. She's not the innocent or virgin type character we get in most horror films where we feel bad for being entertained by all of these bad things that are happening to this poor innocent person. Like Ash, these bad things just keep happening to her because she happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time,and the result is the same kind of entertaining torment that Ash went thought; and it works because Raimi is never malicious towards his main protagonist...those are just the breaks when you become cursed and find yourself in a battle with the supernatural.

I also like how her boyfriend Clay (Justin Long), a professor of psychology, is that typical character who only believes in reason, and therefore is ill equipped to help Christine out because it all just doesn't make sense. These types of disbelieving characters are found in all kinds of these supernatural films, and Long's performance hits all the right notes needed for this kind of character.

Raimi and co. have some fun with genre tropes: false scares (who knew a handkerchief could be so scary), headache-inducing sound, and lots and lots of projectile goo, blood, maggots...you name it, Raimi does it. Raimi also continues his fascination with mixing horror and slapstick humor. There's a scene towards the end that seems right out of Evil Dead 2 or Army of Darkness where Christine is fighting with handkerchief (it'll make sense once you see the movie) and the little piece of linen squeals and cries out in pain when it's ripped in half. Raimi has always been indebted to the Three Stooges, and just like the fight scene between Ash and his hand in Evil Dead 2.

The film is like a masterfully constructed funhouse: for 90 minutes every askew perspective provides an eerie feeling that something is about to scare us, and ever corner we turn there's something else that jumps out at us. We expect to jump and scream and have fun...that's why we paid the price of admission. Raimi uses shadow and sound masterfully throughout the film. Just like in his previous horror films he's instituting the tropes of the horror films that thrilled him no doubt when he was younger. These are films like Cat People, The Haunting, anything with Vincent Price in it, and any other low budget horror film where the filmmakers had to think of creative ways to make their films not look cheap and still scare people. There were a lot of moments in Drag Me to Hell that made me smile because Raimi understands this better than most horror filmmakers today.

Drag Me to Hell is, to put it rather plainly, a whole lot of fun. Raimi films certain scenes with the same frenetic energy and glee found in his Evil Dead series. It reaffirms my belief that all horror doesn't have to leave you cold and depressed. And when that ending happens, and boy does it happen, and the title card is plastered up on the screen a second time, I couldn't help but let out a deep breath and laugh -- the kind of out-of-breath elation synonymous with the feeling of getting off a roller coaster. And that's what I'm talking about when I talk about how fun horror can be, by the time I got home and started thinking about what I wanted to write for this review, I was ready to get right back in line.

Labels: Drag Me to Hell, Film, Horror, Sam Raimi