Pushing your buttons
With all the blood, sputum and bodily fluids flying around in Drag Me To Hell, you’d think someone would think of strapping on an N95 flu mask to prevent infection, right? Well, let’s just say that, in Sam Raimi’s latest comedy-horror flick, catching swine flu is the least of your worries.
I know: with all the troubles afflicting the country and the world, there’s got to be something better to do than watching something called Drag Me To Hell. Right? In my case, wrong. Catching a deliriously hyper Sam Raimi romp is just what the doctor ordered.
Most viewers will know director Raimi from his slick, big-budget Spider-Man movies. They might not have seen his more modest debut from 1981, The Evil Dead (and its two sequels, Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness). They probably didn’t catch Darkman or A Simple Plan. They might not realize that inside Raimi beats the heart of a sick puppy.
Good. All the better to view Drag Me To Hell (as if the title isn’t enough of a tip-off) with an unprepared mind.
At the same time, those who’ve seen the preview of Drag Me To Hell already might think Raimi’s concocted a pure, blood-chilling horror film; credit Sam and brother Ivan for screenwriting this splatter fest with tongue in cheek — and sometimes tongue in teeth, or tongue being ripped from skull.
You’ve got young-ish actress Alison Lohman (she of White Oleander and Matchstick Men) as Christine, a bank loan officer who risks losing a promotion unless she can be more “aggressive” in turning down loans. Unfortunately, that strategy backfires when she takes a hard line with Mrs. Ganush, a witchy-looking old crone whose house is about to be repossessed. The setup takes all of 15 minutes; then it’s off to the roller-coaster rides as Ganush seeks her revenge, attacking Christine in a parking lot in order to extract from her a personal item.
Anyone who’s studied Witchcraft 101 knows that personal items can be used for all sorts of nasty things, such as thowing curses. Christine soon finds herself the recipient of loud and raucous visits from a Lamia — a sort of demon who comes to repossess doomed souls — unless she can find a way to reverse her fortune within three days. She is helped by a medium named Rham Jas (Dileep Rao) and her straight-arrow boyfriend Clay Dalton (Justin Long). But the real fun happens in Christine’s mind, as she tries to beat the devil at his own game.
Raimi has a lot of fun with a genre he helped create with The Evil Dead 18 years back. Part of the reason that low-budget film was a cult hit was that Raimi understood that comedy and shock horror are not really that far apart. Perhaps he simply watched The Exorcist too many times while growing up, and began to find bodies slamming up and down on a mattress or pea soup gushing out of someone’s mouth like a firehose hysterical, a real hoot. The Evil Dead (and its sequels) was possessed with manic, demonic energy, and sometimes the only release from that kind of assault is laughter.
Some of the best bits in Drag Me To Hell seem inspired by Looney Tunes cartoons. An anvil is inexplicably suspended on a pulley above Ganush’s head as she attacks Christine in her garage; cutting the rope results in the inevitable, only I’m pretty sure Wile E. Coyote’s eyeballs never popped out and splattered The Roadrunner’s face in the process. Raimi loves slapstick (he’s a big Three Stooges fan) and this underlies his most inspired mayhem. An office stapler, a pair of dentures: anything lying around becomes an instrument of hyperactive violence. Watch Christine stalk her own kitten with a kitchen knife (“Here, kitty, kitty…”) as she desperately seeks an animal sacrifice for the pissed-off Lamia.
One big turnoff watching the movie here, though: the print we saw was sliced and diced worse than a Hostel sequel. The eye-popping gore — as cartoonish as it is — didn’t survive the snippers of the MTRCB. Obviously the censorship board didn’t get the joke. It’s hard to follow a scene when all you’re left with is the horrified reaction of someone inexplicably covered in blood or human goo. Even a Looney Tunes cartoon requires a little cause-and-effect logic to appreciate.
Much of the business in Drag Me To Hell revolves around the item that Ganush snatches from Christine and forces back on her — a button torn from her coat. Under demonic rules, the person “gifted” with the personal item will be dragged to the depths of hell for eternity. The rest of the movie becomes a game of “Button, button, who’s got the button?”
Credit the Raimis for making Christine a shade more realistic than the average horror flick heroine. She’s cunning and tenacious, but she’s not the “last girl” of so many John Carpenter/Wes Craven flicks. She’s got issues, plenty of flaws. Her chief sin seems to be ambition. In the age of sub-prime market collapses and recessionary cost-cutting, she’s not above saying no to an old lady begging to keep her home. A farm girl who won the “Pork Queen” trophy years ago back in her guilty past, she’s also got eating issues. Also, she thinks she’s not worthy of her boyfriend, a young college professor from an upper-crust family. Most amusingly, she’s not above coldly looking around for a recipient for her unlucky button. By the end, you’re not really sure she’s even worthy of redemption. Sometimes, even in Hollywood, pluck isn’t enough.
