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| Thursday, September 9th
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| Movie Forums :: Reviews :: Drag Me to Hell |
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Posted on 5/31/09
Drag Me to Hell
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Horror films are, at their core, about justice.
Stop laughing and let me explain.
The history of horror in fiction suggests that it is often a form of group catharsis. Slasher films are populated almost entirely by shallow teenagers, and audiences openly delight in watching their demise. It's an unwritten rule that the teenagers having sex or doing drugs in such films are goners, and that the most virtuous character is the most likely to survive. Watching characters die on screen for our amusement feels justifiable when a part of us feels like they deserve it; when it's part of their karmic comeuppance.
Though it would seem odd to suggest that someone as influential in the horror genre as director Sam Raimi would ignore such an important principle, his latest effort, Drag Me to Hell, suggests as much. Most of its characters are good, decent people, though it takes a perverse delight in tormenting them all the more because of it. Injustice seems to be the point.
The premise is simple: a young loan officer named Christine (Alison Lohman) denies an old gypsy woman named Mrs. Ganush (Lorna Raver) a third extension on her mortgage payment. The woman begs and pleads, but is eventually escorted out by security. She attacks Christine and places a curse on her that will cause a demon to literally drag her to hell in three days time. In the meantime, it contents itself by making lots of loud noises, casting shadows on the walls, and frustrating local meteorologists by messing around with the wind a lot. Though Christine is unsure of what's happening to her at first, she eventually comes to grips with her situation, and with the help of a local fortune teller (Dileep Rao) she searches for ways to escape her horrific fate.
Conspicuously absent is any reference to how this all fits into the film's conception of the afterlife, and how a fickle gypsy woman can possess such an arbitrarily massive amount of power. Horror films are not, of course, expected to address such matters in-depth, but Drag Me to Hell tries to have it both ways: it takes advantage of the inherent weight of its theological concepts, but would just as soon circumvent any of the head-scratching questions that result.
The film's first thirty minutes are maddeningly patient and impressively tense, but before long it's relying on excruciatingly loud sound effects to generate fright; a well it visits too many times. You can only have an invisible force strike someone accompanied by an oppressively loud metallic shriek so many times before it starts to lose some of its impact.
As the freshness of the scares begins to die down, the screenplay supplements them with a number of jokes and a plethora of gross-out moments. These actually work quite well; the jokes are especially well-timed and inject just the right amount of levity, and remain one of Raimi's strong suits as both a director and a screenwriter.
Technically, there is no way to withhold some praise for Drag Me to Hell. The casting is flawless; Lohman's mere appearance suggests vulnerability, and Justin Long's Clay (her boyfriend) manages to be wholesome without being bland. The effects are fairly seamless, and the makeup strikes just the right balance between realism and caricature. A late scene in a graveyard stands out as the film's high point.
One thing that can be said for Drag Me to Hell is that it is not of the utterly shallow "Torture Porn" genre inhabited by films like Saw or Hostel. Its transgression is different: it is Despair Porn. It is ruthlessly manipulative in the way it abuses its characters, and wallows in the excesiveness of their punishment, to no real end. It chooses to be uncompromising and brutal simply because it can.
The rating I've given this film is not a reflection of the considerable skill which went into making it, but its overall sense of irredeemability. It is a highly polished exercise; a random experiment in doom. There is no subtext or meaning; there is only the loathsome feeling it generates.
Coincidentally, in the theater men's room afterwards, I happened to select a urinal containing a receipt for the film. It seemed an appropriate place.
NOTE: As time goes on, I find myself questioning whether or not a film is worthwhile simply because it is well-made. Does a film deserve credit simply for managing to invoke intense feelings--even if the feeling is disgust? Do we really have to artificially delineate between what we find impressive and what we find repulsive? I doubt that we can, or even should. I must admire Drag Me to Hell's proficiency as a lover of film, but I reject it as a person.
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