Drag Me to Hell (1/10)
So this whole review might be a little off because I watched it through the lens of "horror" and ONLY "horror." I didn't know I was supposed to watch it as anything else. But looking back, that could be the reason I just hated this movie so much. XD I stopped watching part of the middle because it was so ridiculous, I was rolling my eyes. I watched the final few scenes later on in life, so I've now seen it all and can comment on it thusly.
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SPOILERS
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I guess my first complaint comes almost immediately in the opening scene where Christine works at a bank and she ends up denying this old Romani woman a third extension on her mortgage. Christine was pressured by her boss (a man, of course) that she needed to be more assertive and less of a bleeding heart if she wanted to get promoted any time soon. Christine was just trying to do her job. And the old woman had already received two extensions in the past.
I'm not trying to indicate that she deserved to have her mortgage rejected because "pay your bills lady, no excuses." In no way am I acting like people don't need and deserve shelter at all times. I'm just trying to explain why I sympathize with Christine. She wasn't haughty when she denied this woman's claim. She wasn't bitchy. She didn't say "Have fun freezing at night on the street, you old bag. First thing I'm gonna do after I'm promoted is buy a yacht."
She was literally as polite as she could've possibly been in a difficult situation. And the old woman threw a fit and attacked Christine in her car after her shift was over at work and placed a massive curse on her ... because she refused the bank loan that was already extended twice.
...
Christine just didn't deserve what happened to her. They framed the character of the old woman as if I was supposed to be sympathetic to her but Christine just wasn't bad enough to warrant such a curse. She was just doing her job. I just - It just didn't make any narrative sense and was a nagging confusion for me the whole way through the film.
I prefer my protagonists to deserve what is coming their way. I like to believe that good will be rewarded and evil will be punished. I know it's not always that way, but as long as I'm taking in fictional material for entertainment purposes, that is the best way to make sure I leave the experience happy.
Christine made multiple attempts to set things right. She tried to attend the old woman's funeral and accidentally made a huge, horrific scene. She did that ACCIDENTALLY. She didn't go into that grieving family's parlor to desecrate the body of their dead grandmother. She was just a bit clumsy. She tried to give the button back to end the curse and ended up giving a collectable coin that was the exact same size in an envelope instead. It was just a bunch of stupid little accidents that apparently seemed like they were sort of trying to warrant this woman being burned for all eternity.
Now, I know - I KNOW bad things happen to good people and there aren't always REASONS for people to be hurt or punished. I understand that demons don't discriminate, especially in horror films.
Example: the group of hapless, horny teenagers that get slaughtered during the creature-features and slashers. They don't really "deserve what happens to them" either.
I get it.
But it's still stupid in this context. This film is too ridiculous for that to feel like an actual "life lesson," y'know? It was like "this isn't the time or place for that," if Sam Raimi was actually trying to make some sort of sincere commentary. The massive, spewing bloody nose and the really fake goat puppet ruined that chance for me.
Christine just didn't deserve what happened to her, and that really rubbed me the wrong way for the whole film.
One big note: I was very unsympathetic when she killed her pet kitten. That was way out of line. That was actually when I turned the movie off for the first time because I was just like "This just keeps getting worse and worse. Why am I even watching it?" She could have gone to a shelter and found an animal that was on the euthanasia list, a stray on the street that was obviously having a horrible time of it already. I saw no reason for her to have done what she did in that particular instance.
It's funny because she later gets a chance to pass the curse onto another person and free herself. She thinks of someone who is sick and dying, someone who is lonely and depressed, someone that would be more "reasonable" to afflict with this curse. But she just can't do it because she's such a good person. (But apparently cats can fuck off, who cares if you sacrifice one or two to a demon?)
Again, not trying to make any excuses for such cruel behavior - just acknowledging that she did it out of fear and desperation, not just because she was an asshole that liked to hurt animals for no reason.
Still not thinking she FULL-ON deserves to be dragged to hell.
She owns up to the choice that she made and is openly repentant about it and trying to set things right. I genuinely don't think it's JUST because she was cursed and trying to end said curse. I think she was genuinely sorry, not just to save her own skin. But anyway, she's with her man in the subway.
Her fiancé says "Oops, this is your button right? We must've switched it up with my lucky coin lol."
The zoom in on Christine's face is so dramatic and silly. And then she panics and walks backward and ends up falling onto the subway tracks. And a train is coming.
As she's trying to get up on the tracks, a portal to hell opens up beneath her and just - drags her down, like the old woman said it would at the beginning.
It was just so absurd, I don't know how to even express how weird it was. Maybe I'm just taking it too seriously and it wasn't meant for me to think about it this hard and get so emotionally invested. But still -
Honestly, I think I would've found it more interesting if she had just died in a regular old train crash. If it was "all in her head" and there were never any supernatural forces at play. It was just something that made her so afraid and desperate that she like - became a self fulfilling prophecy. That would've been a bit more thought-provoking than having the curse be so literal.
Like, if the mere IDEA of her being cursed sort of made her ACT cursed all by herself. Like, if she hurt more animals trying to make a bigger sacrifice for the demon. If she traded the curse off to poor unfortunate strangers again and again, doing anything to save her neck. If Hell wasn't "literal" in the biblical sense, but more so what was left of her life after SHE unintentionally ruined it with her paranoia and fear and selfishness.
The train was just a train. The button was just a button and there was never anything special about it. It was all smoke and mirrors and head games. She BECAME a demon in her attempt to save her own skin when the threat might've been completely made up instead of real.
But no, it was real. She got dragged right to Hell, leaving her fiancé sobbing on the side of the tracks.
It was such a massive genre clash. I just don't get it.
But maybe it's just not for me.
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Anway, final review:
1/10
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More reviews to come~
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