drag me to hell
May. 30th, 2009 11:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
intertribalI decided to see Drag Me to Hell because it got a NYTimes critic's pick. Apparently it was supposed to be a combination of funny and scary and Evil Dead-y, or something. And it was funny, in some parts. But it was never funny without being scary. While not soul-crushingly scary like The Ring - a good thing, since I wouldn't have enjoyed it at all if that were the case - it was definitely full of jump-scenes, major gross-outs, and some serious supernatural heebie-jeebies. I had my eyes protected about 1/5 of the time, I would say, but that's because I'm scared of jump-scenes. The part where I actually felt genuinely afraid was the seance. Ho ho, that was a bad ass seance. That was when I said, "okay, I'm not watching this." Luckily I went with Christina, who being Greek Orthodox understands exactly where I'm coming from. The whole idea of curses is not a suspension of disbelief for either of us, it's safe to say. Regardless - damn load of fun, if you're into this sort of thing.
The plot, in case the trailers didn't make it clear: Christine Brown, loan officer, turns down a gypsy woman's request for a credit extension. Gypsy woman curses her. The rest of the movie is Christine's escalating efforts to avoid getting drug to hell in three days.
I adore movies like this. There are far too few of them that do it well. And by "like this" I mean that concentrate on the occult - on spells, the components of spells, magic, sacrifices, demons, psychic brouhaha. "Occult alchemy" is a bit of a hobby of mine. I've checked out every book on multicultural witchcraft in the local library - not the history of it, mind you, but the practice, and I can probably invent for you a convincing-sounding spell for anything. No guarantees that it would work, of course. But I do think Aleister Crowley was killed by a demon he couldn't handle, and I do sort of believe the Necromonicon; etc., etc. You get the picture.
Anyway, most horror movies don't adopt this angle. That's cuz I think a common understanding of the supernatural/paranormal, at least in the Western world, is that it's pretty much impossible to work with. You can right an injustice and finish unfinished business, sure, but you're still taking action in the tangible, "real" world - you're basically just being given a really strong incentive to do the right thing. Either that or the whole plot revolves around striking down evil that can't be compromised with (like Soviet Russia and Al-Qaeda). This is different. This is straight negotiation with the supernatural, like you would with your neighbor - because it's coming from a mindset that accepts the supernatural as a part of daily life. Need your crops to grow? Give an offering to the local agricultural god. Mad at your husband? Curse his ass. Cows being killed? It's probably a ghost tiger; burn some incense. Nothing your village can't handle.
Most movies that veer toward "occult alchemy" end up in Exorcist territory. Which is not what I'm talking about. That's way too absolutist for this sort of thing. Despite the religious connotations of hell, Drag Me To Hell is entirely devoid of religion. Christine Brown never goes to a parish for help. The hero-helpers here are psychic mediums and fortune tellers, naturally. The menacing demon takes all forms, from spooky and abstract to absurd and comical (my favorite being the goat with a humanish face that turns around and calls Christine a whore). That's of course because this sort of horror isn't really trying to terrify people - into going to church, into being traumatized, into whatever - it's trying to entertain. And it's trying to show that life isn't 100% horrific, just like it isn't 100% rainbows and unicorns, or 100% anything. It's gooey and slippery and physical and in-between, and I therefore see this kind of horror as a little more realistic - or at least concrete and constructive and working-class, so to speak - than the absolutist horror movie that relies on transformation of the soul. Christine's predicament never feels too unrealistic to relate to, and it never skates over the real-life nitty-gritty details of curses - like how you're going to get the $10,000 to pay the psychic medium. In fact, transformation of the soul is the sort of thing this genre laughs at - like in Skeleton Key, when the heroine thinks all she has to do is "not believe" to avoid the spell, or in Constantine, when the titular anti-hero starts to ascend to heaven while flipping off Satan - and Drag Me To Hell's no exception in that regard.
So anyway - good, exciting, entertaining horror movie. Roller-coasterish and filled with the details that crypto-freaks like me are likely to get a huge kick out of.
The plot, in case the trailers didn't make it clear: Christine Brown, loan officer, turns down a gypsy woman's request for a credit extension. Gypsy woman curses her. The rest of the movie is Christine's escalating efforts to avoid getting drug to hell in three days.
I adore movies like this. There are far too few of them that do it well. And by "like this" I mean that concentrate on the occult - on spells, the components of spells, magic, sacrifices, demons, psychic brouhaha. "Occult alchemy" is a bit of a hobby of mine. I've checked out every book on multicultural witchcraft in the local library - not the history of it, mind you, but the practice, and I can probably invent for you a convincing-sounding spell for anything. No guarantees that it would work, of course. But I do think Aleister Crowley was killed by a demon he couldn't handle, and I do sort of believe the Necromonicon; etc., etc. You get the picture.
Anyway, most horror movies don't adopt this angle. That's cuz I think a common understanding of the supernatural/paranormal, at least in the Western world, is that it's pretty much impossible to work with. You can right an injustice and finish unfinished business, sure, but you're still taking action in the tangible, "real" world - you're basically just being given a really strong incentive to do the right thing. Either that or the whole plot revolves around striking down evil that can't be compromised with (like Soviet Russia and Al-Qaeda). This is different. This is straight negotiation with the supernatural, like you would with your neighbor - because it's coming from a mindset that accepts the supernatural as a part of daily life. Need your crops to grow? Give an offering to the local agricultural god. Mad at your husband? Curse his ass. Cows being killed? It's probably a ghost tiger; burn some incense. Nothing your village can't handle.
Most movies that veer toward "occult alchemy" end up in Exorcist territory. Which is not what I'm talking about. That's way too absolutist for this sort of thing. Despite the religious connotations of hell, Drag Me To Hell is entirely devoid of religion. Christine Brown never goes to a parish for help. The hero-helpers here are psychic mediums and fortune tellers, naturally. The menacing demon takes all forms, from spooky and abstract to absurd and comical (my favorite being the goat with a humanish face that turns around and calls Christine a whore). That's of course because this sort of horror isn't really trying to terrify people - into going to church, into being traumatized, into whatever - it's trying to entertain. And it's trying to show that life isn't 100% horrific, just like it isn't 100% rainbows and unicorns, or 100% anything. It's gooey and slippery and physical and in-between, and I therefore see this kind of horror as a little more realistic - or at least concrete and constructive and working-class, so to speak - than the absolutist horror movie that relies on transformation of the soul. Christine's predicament never feels too unrealistic to relate to, and it never skates over the real-life nitty-gritty details of curses - like how you're going to get the $10,000 to pay the psychic medium. In fact, transformation of the soul is the sort of thing this genre laughs at - like in Skeleton Key, when the heroine thinks all she has to do is "not believe" to avoid the spell, or in Constantine, when the titular anti-hero starts to ascend to heaven while flipping off Satan - and Drag Me To Hell's no exception in that regard.
So anyway - good, exciting, entertaining horror movie. Roller-coasterish and filled with the details that crypto-freaks like me are likely to get a huge kick out of.
