Drag Me To Hell
Drag Me to the Theater is more like it
If you live within, say, two hundred miles of an Indian casino of some sort, you'll likely have run across an ad for a concert at the casino featuring some washed-up band of sixties-or-seventies-or-eighties has-beens. Now, there's nothing inherently pathetic about old bands touring. But when the bands are museum pieces, having produced no new music in the decades since their last hit, or are pale imitations of their former selves, consisting of only one original member or even no original members, that's when things start smelling fishy. When fifty- and sixty year-olds haul their creaky bodies up on stage and shake their flabby butts to some insipid pop jingle for the benefit of their even fatter audience, the members of which harbor only the vaguest memories of the band in the first place (except for the one or two really really crazy fans)... yeah, that just makes me want to cry. It's even worse in bands where there was a decided binomial distribution in charisma, and the charismatic guy isn't around anymore, like the DKs without Jello, Van Halen without Diamond Dave, or the Sunshine Band without K.C.
You may be asking why I'm bringing this up. It's not because I've been to Konoktai Harbor recently; rather, it's because I just sat through Drag Me To Hell, a film whose closest analog is one of those dottering, washed-up one-hit-wonder casino bands no longer in possession of their former cool-as-ice frontman. In this case, it's Sam Raimi trying to recapture the the funky comedic horror of his early successes, the Evil Dead triptych, particularly Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn. Problem is, Raimi doesn't have Bruce Campbell along for the ride this time, or even anyone vaguely like him. It's not like he found even a Sammy Hagar to sub for David Lee Roth; it's like they got that other guy from Wham! to sub for David Lee Roth. Raimi applies the ED2 formula ruthlessly, but without Campbell's combination of smarmy charmball and sympathetic put-upon everyman, it fails harder than a Bond villain's henchman.
Everything about this movie malfunctioned. Every gag fell flat, every scare merely annoys (and can you PLEASE lay off the jump scares, guys? That shit's as dead as Dillinger) and even the patented Raimi gross-outs are laughable for all the wrong reasons. The harder Raimi tries, the worse the result. Most aspects of this movie are either (a) completely useless, having no justification for their existence whatsoever or (b) grimly, comically awry, missing their mark by miles.
Let's start with the characters. Our protagonist Christine (Alison Lohman) is a cypher; a former farm girl (and "Pork Queen"), the brief allusions to her childhood and alcoholic mother are more interesting than anything about her contemporary life as a loan officer. She has an aggressively bland boyfriend (Justin Long) who is such a nonentity I can't remember his name and I just watched the damned thing. His father is clueless, his mother is a horrible shrew. Christine's boss, while ostensibly a man in his forties, rather has the soul of a fickle fourteen-year-old girl. There's also Stu, a mind-bogglingly scummy co-worker, and some fortune teller guy who I think they call Ram Dass. And, last but certainly not least, the Crazy Old Gypsy Lady Whose Name I Also Forgot Already, who is quite possibly the worst human being ever.
See, Crazy Old Gypsy (hereafter: Cog) goes to Christine's bank, looking for yet another extension on her mortgage. You can just taste the tension already, huh? Anyhoo, Christine declines Cog her third extension, because Christine's bucking for the open Assistant Manager position and... well, I don't really know what that has to do with anything but the movie seems to think the two things are related and fuck it, Christine tells her no. Cog goes all old-world on our heroine, prostrating herself on the floor and basically acting like a moron. Cog accuses Christine of "shaming" her, which apparently is a grievous sin since Cog is "a proud woman". Now let's examine this claim a bit more closely. At this point, we've seen Cog tapping her filthy, cracked fingernails on Christine's desk, hacking up her lungs and spitting into her hand, taking out her rotten dentures and cleaning them with her handkerchief, and throwing herself on the floor of a bank and wailing like denied child. Yep, the very picture of pride, an image confirmed a moment later when security guards escort Cog from the bank out to her filthy, battered tuna boat of a car. Clearly Cog is a woman of immense dignity.
Indeed, Cog's dignity is so deep and fundamental to her character that later that evening, when she breaks into Christine's car for a little Michael Myers-style stalking, she... well, she waits in Christine's car in order to ambush her. Kinda speaks for itself. There then follows the single most ludicrous fight scene in the history of cinema, and yes, I meant to say that. I've seen the fight between Sly Stallone and David Carradine in Death Race 2000. This is crazier.
It's also when the film officially falls apart. This is the moment when Raimi pulls out that ol' black magic. It's when you're supposed to think, "hoo boy, here it comes! We're in for a real old-school treat!" So: you're at the casino, some opening band no one's ever heard of has come and gone, and "Black Sabbath" has taken the stage, or at least a drummer, a bassist, and a guitarist calling themselves Black Sabbath are on stage. Not Geezer Butler and Bill Ward and Tony Iommi, but whatever. They're playing say, the intro to War Pigs, and you're thinking this just might be okay and you're waiting for Ozzy to jump out on stage and belt out the opening lines, but instead of Ozzy it's some guy who used to sing backup for Mott The Hoople or something. Your drink is watery, your wallet is empty and you realize it's going to be a long, disturbing night.
That's what this fight scene is like.
Cut to the chase: Cog curses Christine. This particular curse is nasty, since it involves summoning a demon, a "Lamia" to torment Christine for three days, then, literally, drag her off to an eternity of torment. This is such a immense stupidity that I can't even wrap my fucking head around it, but I'll try. There's two things in particular about this that piss me off:
- Lamiae are female; indeed in many myths, they serve as the dark side of femininity itself. From Aristophanes to Samuel Coleridge's "Christabel", the Lamia has been portrayed many, many times, in many, many ways, but never as a male, as in this movie. Why they did this is a total mystery.
- The curse subjects the victim to eternal damnation in Hell. Regardless of what one thinks of the Christian world-view and Heaven and Hell and all that, it's pretty well established that in that cosmology, God and God alone decides who goes to Hell, not some Chrysler-driving old hag with shitty dentures. No one in the entire movie questions this conceit in the least degree.
The rest of the movie has one of two tones: long, lingering shots of Christine sloooooowly walking towards some threatening sound somewhere, and laughably off-the-mark attempts at Evil Dead-style gross-outs. None of it works, because no one—not one single character—is likable. There's no identification with any of these drips, so there's no drama, no tension. There's no fun to be had in the levitating, possessed-by-demons onlookers, or the splattering heads, sprays of blood, popping eyeballs, or showers of maggoty vomit, and damnit, there should be. But it's just not there. It's just that sad simulacra of a once-decent band going through the motions in order to pay off the IRS. And there's no Bruce Campbell, either. WTF is up with that?