The American Spectator : Drag Me to Hell

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Drag Me to Hell

By James Bowman on 6.16.09 @ 6:02AM

It helps to believe in hell if you're going to make a movie in which it figures prominently.

What do you suppose are the chances that the brothers Raimi, Sam and Ivan, who are responsible for Drag Me to Hell, actually believe in hell? Given the probability that most clergymen these days don't believe in it, I'd say they were pretty low. So what are the implications for a movie in the climactic scene of which we watch as the ground opens up beneath one of the characters, who is then dragged down into a fiery pit screaming "Help me! Help me please"? When a similar thing happens in Mozart's opera, Don Giovanni, the eponymous victim doesn't scream like a little girl. He is defiant to the end, spurning all offers of help, which is what creates the moral universe of that great opus irrespective of whether Mozart or da Ponte, his librettist, actually believed in hell or were only using it symbolically. In Drag Me there is no moral universe. Hell is, like everything else, just a joke.

Or at least I assume it is. The alternative is to suppose that the authors are getting a chuckle out of imagining someone's being submitted to eternal torments. That, as Dr. Johnson said of Hamlet's wish for Claudius, "That his soul may be as damn'd and black/As hell, whereto it goes," is a thing "too horrible to be read or to be uttered." But in a "non-judgmental" world in which we have grown used to thinking of actions as detached from their consequences and thus, gradually, to thinking of them as having no consequences, the iconography of hell has become nothing more than part of the repertory of horror-movie effects. And, of course, for some time now horror movies have been trending comical, since the horror-movie effects are well recognized as such by the media-savvy teenage audiences for which they are made and so are not taken seriously anymore.

Actually, Drag Me to Hell resembles reality TV more than it does most horror movies. That too may represent a trend. It also has about as much reality as reality TV too, which is to say zero. The movie is constantly threatening to turn into the kind of reality show in which contestants have to eat bugs and wallow in mudpits with corpses and do other gross things in order to prove their willingness to flatter a degenerate audience's sense of what "reality" is. The contestant in this case is pretty little Christine Brown (Alison Lohman), a bank loan officer who, angling for a promotion from a boss (David Paymer) who wants her to show how tough she is, denies an extension on her mortgage to an old gypsy woman (Lorna Raver), who proceeds to curse her. That's what leads to the bugs and whatnot. Seeing her almost childish feminine freshness violated by various forms of grossness and corruption seems to me to be intended to produce a sexual frisson -- and not in a good way.

Now I'm no expert on gypsy curses, but I'm pretty sure that they expire at the grave. Gypsies may be the possessors of powerful magic, but it would be decidedly heterodox to suppose that they -- or any other mortals, angels or spirits below the pay-grade of the Divinity Himself -- had the power to damn anyone to hell. If hell existed, that is. And if anyone were ever sent there, which we are now generally pretty sure no one ever is. The theological confusion just renders the emptiness of the moral universe of the movie and the triviality and artificiality of its gallery of schlock horrors that much more weightless in the imagination -- as if the Raimis had said, "Whatever. We know you're not going to take any of this stuff seriously anyway."

It's too bad, since I went to their movie hoping for a touch of satire, a point of contact with the real world which seemed to be promised by the allusion to the current credit crisis and foreclosure epidemic. Surely it must be possible to impose a moral template on the behavior of borrowers or lenders or both such that a supernatural sanction of some sort on that behavior might fit in with a genuine, grown-up, moral understanding of the world? But if so, the Raimi brothers have given all that a miss for the sake of a feeble, po-mo joke. In the classic horror films, the authors dared their audience to believe in monsters or ghosts or zombies, as even Mr. Sam Raimi does to some extent in his "Evil Dead" franchise. That even so little belief as this is no longer on the agenda may also be not unconnected with the kind of moral laxity that has led to so much economic hardship.

About the Author

James Bowman, our movie and culture critic, is a resident scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He is the author of Honor: A History and Media Madness: The Corruption of Our Political Culture, both published by Encounter Books.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (19) | Leave a comment

Appleby| 6.16.09 @ 7:38AM

True hell is what Generation Yne is going to discover when it gets out into the workplace: Total Anonymity. Hell for the newly fledged lawyer will be condemnation to reviewing real estate documents and producing case law memos on abstract points of contract law, in an office the size of their bathroom at home.

Hell for the newly fledged Journalism Major is going to be exile to the copy room assisting people who learned their craft by practicing it, and seeing her ideas displayed under other peoples bylines and her own name only on her paycheque.

Oh, hell exists, all right. It is that point in life when nobody knows you exist...when the boss looks up and says Where is Whats Her Name, and nobody knows whom he means.

P. Aaron| 6.16.09 @ 8:35AM

Hell is Michigan. Yes, indeed. Hell is watching Granholm's defenders state that: "she is doing a good job" instead blaming the last governor who's been out of office since 2002. Welcome to hell.

Dave| 6.16.09 @ 8:36AM

My wife went to school with the Raimi boys. Based on her recollections, I would guess that don't believe in Hades.

Andrew B| 6.16.09 @ 8:51AM

I can't comment on the Raimis' views on Hell, but I have read enough of their thoughts to be bothered by their infernal smugness. Sam Raimi has said that he believes his protagonist deserves her fate because she is mean to the old gypsy. Huh? She is physically assaulted and then condemned to an eternity of damnation because she won't refinance a delinquent loan?

Perhaps the next time Mr. Raimi wants financing for a film he should hold a bake sale. Better that than to soil his hands with something so filthy as capitalism.

dcc| 6.16.09 @ 9:24AM

The point of a horror movie is to induce thrills and chills by vicariously induced fear and sympathetic discomfort. Does the movie accomplish this in a satisfylingly paced fashion?

Jean-Paul Sartre| 6.16.09 @ 9:36AM

"Hell is other people."

Doctor Right| 6.16.09 @ 10:31AM

Hell is another one of James Bowman's obtuse movie reviews, where one is forced to read at least 3-4 paragraphs of pompous prose to figure out:

A. What's the damn movie about? And...
B. Did he like it??

Son Of Sam| 6.16.09 @ 10:47AM

Horror movies --like reality TV shows-- are a waste of time, for two reasons:

A) there are and have been hundreds of real life events that are far more horrible than ANYTHING that's ever been put into a horror flick, because......

B) Hollywood is a synthetic bubble populated by plastic people thinking artificial thoughts and animated by saccharine compassion.

For a really great take on B), go rent or torrent the movie "Barton Fink". The entire flick revolves around a "writer" trying to find "real life" stories, continuously being told by a guy he routinely IGNORES "hey pal, I could tell you some stories". The ignored guy turns out to be a criminal and a psychotic, who in fact, really did have some stories to tell.

hey "Raimi boys", I got a story for you: go to a clinic where they're doing late term abortions, and film the body disposal. Make a film version of the "Gulag Archiplego". Show some people dying of AIDS, or starvation. Show what it's like living under the mullahs in Iran, or under the late Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Naaaahhhh, that's just not "horror" inducing.

stand strong until freedom dawns
Son Of Sam
http://www.samadamssos.bravehost.com

Le Cracquere| 6.16.09 @ 10:52AM

Well, horror movies USUALLY raise more moral, philosophical, and theological issues than they can answer usefully without derailing the film.

In re Don Giovanni: the seriousness with which a creator treats the subject of hell is a matter of personal style, not of piety or artistic seriousness. Lord Byron probably wasn't much more pious than Raimi, but the former has Manfred face damnation with a Giovanniesque grandeur. Conversely, the very devout Moliere has his Dom Juan damned with a touch of insouciance and a low-comedy aftermath.

Raimi doesn't belong in the above company, of course, but anyone who's seen the Evil Dead movies should know that he likes to present his more horrific subject matter with quasi-comic timing and a dose of deliberate artifice that leaves the viewer wondering "is this where I laugh, where I yelp, or where I grab the barf bag?" Not high art, but it's Raimi's thing, and a useful review should probably address how well he succeeds at that, and how much a less po-faced fellow than Bowman (sorry, J.B.) will enjoy himself.

C.S. Lewis| 6.16.09 @ 2:01PM

Sartre: "Hell is other people".

So is Heaven.

Old Texican| 6.16.09 @ 2:49PM

I am amazed at descriptions of...Hell!

Ladies and gentlemen...Hell is total separation from love...or even the hope of love...forever.

The love of God cannot go into Hell, because everyone there...by choice...turned their back on the love of God.

Each one there, literally turned their back on the very idea of a caring, loving Creator.

Folks...that is called..."Free Will"!

Womnufgod| 10.3.09 @ 10:17PM

FINALLY ONE EDUCATED STATEMENT ON
HELL.

Michelle61| 6.16.09 @ 3:18PM

To P. Aaron, I agree with you, and btw, there really IS a city named Hell in Michigan....

Alan Brooks| 6.16.09 @ 9:02PM

Hell is broken families wallowing in marywanna and porn ....

Alan Brooks| 6.16.09 @ 9:03PM

....remember what age today's parents grew up in
-- it wasn't the '50s.

Hank| 6.16.09 @ 10:48PM

I'm pretty sure that Raimi doesn't believe in zombies, psychics or radioactive spiders either. However, he was still able to make movies such as "the Evil Dead," "the Gift" and "Spider-man."

matt jones| 6.17.09 @ 3:18AM

right. did we forget that a horror movie is supposed to be scary? this is not a look at morality in the world, of which your interpretation is extremely faulty. but first, yes none but the Almighty has the ability to banish anyone to eternal damnation. now, the movie is not going to answer any philosophical questions because it does not have to- somethinhg many over the top directors forget. further more the true metaphor in the movie is fear, predominantly based around the very real fear that everything one holds dear can and and will be taken away in a moment's notice. thus this is the 'hell' featured in the movie. i have not seen this piece but am told there is a talking goat- possesed by an evil spirit- in the film, which perhaps may symbolize the utter loss of reality- even benign goats can be made in to the playthings of evil, as well as the actually deep religious signifigance of cloven animals signifying the source of evil in many tales involving the Christian depiction of the most vile. now one of the main resons consequences are seperated from actions is the liklihood thought process. such and such only happens to such and such. it is not the absence of judgement but the belief that only certain people face consequences- as supported by conservative parties. but really do tell how much psychotropic drugs did you take before you wrote this? it is embarrasing.

jimmy| 6.25.09 @ 6:30PM

I'm glad to see it doing well. I particularly liked the dark cinematography. I found a good discussion of the movie at pandalous. It's here: http://www.pandalous.com/nodes/drag_me_to_hell