Drag Me to Hell

I just watched Drag Me to Hell last night. I saw it originally at the theater when it came out but hadn’t seen it since. I’ve been in the mood to watch it recently because I’ve been joking with my girlfriend, Tiffany, that she’s suffering under a gypsy curse since she has the worst luck of anybody I know; most recently, she’s had two car accidents in the past few months, both ending with her car totaled (yes, that includes the car she bought to replace the first totaled car). After the second accident, I asked if she had pissed off some old gypsy woman. Then a Blockbuster nearby was closing down, so I stocked up on a few clearance DVDs, including Drag Me to Hell. Yesterday was Friday the 13th, so my sister-in-law, Kelly, suggested watching a horror movie, so we all (Tiffany, Kelly, me, and my brother, Nate) gathered to watch it.

As I mentioned, I had seen the movie before at the theater and remembered liking it, but I had forgotten how good it really is. I am a fan of the director Sam Raimi. I’ve seen nearly all his movies (I did a quick search on imdb.com, and I think the only feature film he’s directed that I haven’t seen is The Quick and the Dead, which I really should see). Not all Raimi’s films are great, but they range from decent enough (Darkman) to hilarious and silly (Army of Darkness) to actually far better than I might have predicted (A Simple Plan), considering Raimi is the guy who directed Bruce Campbell fighting against his own possessed hand. After Raimi made the three Spider-Man movies, which I liked pretty well but wasn’t as thrilled with as some other superhero movies like the Christopher Nolan Batmans (Batmen?), I wondered if Raimi would stick to bigger budget action movies, but then he returned to a movie that had a very similar feeling to the Evil Dead movies that made me a Raimi fan in the first place.

Somehow, Drag Me to Hell manages to feel fresh and original while simultaneously feeling like a much older movie. Maybe it feels older to me just because it reminds me of Rami’s earlier work, or maybe it’s just that the gypsy curse plot hardly feels unique. But once the premise has been established, there’s a lot of fun as the curse develops. There are laugh out loud disgusting moments, including the old gypsy woman’s slobbery biting attack, vomiting maggots, and perhaps the worst nosebleed in cinema history. If such splatstick (a term I believe coined by Raimi about his approach to horror back in the Evil Dead days) doesn’t appeal to you, then this certainly isn’t your kind of movie. But if it does, if you like the idea of horror movies but also recognize that most of them are terrible, then this movie is probably the type you’ll enjoy.

Taking itself too seriously might be the worst trait a horror movie can have, and Drag Me to Hell is not guilty of this offense. Certainly horror can have social messages, as in Dawn of the Dead; in fact, I think the science fiction genre, which often overlaps with horror, can be a great medium for social commentary. But the filmmakers need to accept that the genre is full of clichés, that the premises are ridiculous, and that the fun isn’t really in being scared (after all, unless you’re a little kid, you probably never get genuinely scared at horror movies), the fun is in playing with the elements of the genre. And this movie has a lot of fun. Horror movies are full of blood? OK, then how about a bloody nose that sprays all over the room? Horror movies feature creepy dead bodies? Then how about the heroine accidentally knocking over a body at a funeral and having the rigor mortised fingers clutch at the heroine’s hair, ripping out a chunk?

The best horror movies do play on real fears, even simple fears like darkness, death, and strangers, and Drag Me to Hell does that. But the best horror movies also know that since the tongue probably won’t be genuinely screaming, a good place for it would be in the cheek.