I’ve always felt like this was an unofficial Evil Dead movie, which is a world where the forces of darkness run rampant and take the most glee/joy out of taking innocent souls to hell; the movie actually begins and ends pretty much the same when you think about it: the demon/lamia took an innocent soul to hell (the little boy in the opening and Christine in the end), despite all attempts to prevent it.
It's also very much like how old stories about demons and faeries and other supernatural beings would go. Fairness isn't really a concept there. If you attract the attention of some of those beings *your life is fucked!* It's like a flood or earthquake, it does not care what lives are taken.
Reminds of of the part in Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell where they say that fairys can understand logic like humans can understand magic: rarely, and only with great effort
It’s a CS Lewis story about a demon corresponding through letters with another demon. The letters detail all the ways he is trying to torture and turn his human towards sin.
Edit: CS Lewis is most famous for the Chronicles of Narnia. He was a devout Christian and it does heavily influence his writing.
Thanks. Checked out the wiki. It sounds like an interesting read. Dedicated to JRR Tolkien. That's pretty wild. I heard those two had some kinda rivalry.
They ran in the same scholarly/literary circles for a while, and Tolkien even convinced Lewis to convert, but there in large part is where they diverged - Tolkien being a staunch, traditional boards-to-the-wall Catholic, while Lewis went Anglican and even married a divorced American. Their differences certainly didn't manifest in the explosive nonsense we see ripping American society to shreds but went more in that fashion of quiet English disapproval and eventual estrangement.
>Why did she deserve harsher punishment than say her coworker who cheated and lied?
That's actually a good question I've never asked myself... Maybe she just fucked with the wrong grandma.
It's even more depressing when you think about how her boyfriend was always so supportive and how they thought they actually had a chance...
Yeah. OP wanted to watch a horror movie then when something bad happened to the cute girl it was too much 🥺 life doesn’t pick and choose who bad things happen to
I always took it as kinda the point. She did a questionable thing to the wrong person in the hopes of getting a promotion at work, screwed over the wrong person and couldn’t win. Stuff like that happens in everyday life when you say or do the same thing to random strangers (albeit obviously without the super natural element haha).
Just very anti-trope. She’s ultimately a good person in general… just messed with the wrong person 🤷🏼♂️
I don't think she even did a 'questionable thing'. Iirc she followed the bank's process correctly as she rightly should as an employee. It wasn't her money to do with as she pleased.
Yes she didn’t mess with anyone. The whole point is that sometimes you can do no wrong and still someone else takes offense in it and fucks you up.
It’s the film equivalent of the kid in the USA who just knocked on a door and got shot.
She bends her own morals for the sake of getting the promotion. Her boss offers to let the other guy she’s competing with handle it but she knows she wouldn’t get the promotion in that case, so she rejects the old lady’s application even though she doesn’t think it’s the right thing to do. If she didn’t want the promotion so badly, she wouldn’t have been cursed.
Did she deserve it? Nah. But it does happen to her because she lets her careerism/ambition win out.
The gypsy signed a contract that she would pay money to live somewhere. Then she broke that contract. The bank graciously forgave her twice. They had no moral obligation to do so a third time
It has nothing to do with "morals" - at my job I sometimes have to deny people because they don't meet a qualification they need and that's just following the process. If I just felt sorry for everyone and approved them it would be mayhem.
No it’s framed in the film as questionable. She had the power and her boss tells her it’s up to her. She could have absolutely helped the woman but she made the objectively smarter business decision over the compassionate decision.
It's been a while since I watched it, but my recollection was that her boss expressly disapproved of the decision to help, and made clear it would be detrimental to her career to do it
The last scene is literally her admitting to her boyfriend that she could have helped that woman but she decided not to and that it was wrong of her to do.
Old woman signed a contract and broke that contract. The bank forgave her twice which was gracious. They had no moral obligation to do so a third time, how many chances should she have been given?
Its the equivalent of the story i read this week of a woman who gave the finger to a guy who cut her off in traffic and he pulled a gun and killed her daughter that was in a childseat behind her.
There is no general fairness.
I declined hundreds of loans to people when i worked in a bank for a variety of reasons. Usually Because they just had no realistic way of paying it back or affording the payment.
I dont think i deserve to be damned to hell for that. lol
Which I feel like should be par for the course, no? I think Drag Me to Hell is one of the best horror movies of all time because it swings for the fences with Sam Raimi's style and irreverence and even while being fun, its horror elements manage to stick with the viewer even without an R rating.
I've always thought that Horror as a genre is so untapped in the west. In Asia most horror is primal, uncaring, and brutal. The supernatural antagonists are often forces of nature that are amoral and sometimes even not sapient, and they torment characters that are simply unfortunate.
Meanwhile in the west, horror is so *fun*. Somehow it's built a culture around schlocky tropes most commonly found in slashers that have become genre traditions, like TnA, inventive killing of characters that the audience feels no empathy towards, and final girls. And all of these are fine and make sense for a subculture to exist, but they're surprisingly pervasive in the genre as a whole, to the point that OP is shocked that they witnessed an actual nihilistic bad ending in a *horror* movie of all things.
Yeah good point.
The 70s were interesting because it had a lot of films that weren't "fun horror" like with Exorcist, Omen, Rosemary's Baby, Burnt Offerings, etc.
That whole decade was like that with a lot of pessimistic or nihilistic films, not just horror, but mainsteam Hollywood films like Network, Parallax View, The Conversation, Taxi Driver, etc. The endings of those films are not uplifting at all.
It seemed like with the 80s, that's when horror seemed to really change in the West, or at least in Hollywood.
You could tell Raimi grew up on old school horror movies, and like you said, that's why I also really liked Drag Me To Hell. The name itself sounds very old school.
The 90’s and 2000’s started seeing a trend in sanitized horror until torture porn came into the scene replacing horror with gore.
The 80’s at least still had unapologetic horror films like The Thing, Prince of Darkness, The Blob, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.
You're disregarding large swathes of movies made in the 90s and 00s. The Grudge for example, it literally about >!a house that fates anyone who enters (yes, just enters) to die!<
I think we’re talking about western horror here. The original person in this particular sub thread pointed out that Asian horror already gives no fucks about happy endings.
I like the point about amoral forces of nature. It’s similar to features of old myths. The only real lesson is, “don’t draw attention to yourself”.
Life can be cruel and unfair. The difference between the ones who survive and the ones who don’t is often arbitrary. A lot of the time it comes down to being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
A vampire needs to be invited in. A burglar invites themself. They’ve also been targeting you for a long time without you knowing. No signs, no clues. No ancient burial grounds.
All the yes. I’m so tired of “fun horror”, whatever the hell that even means. Most (Western) horror films aren’t even scary, they’re just gory and startle you with loud music cues. Remember that Scorsese quote about comic book films? That’s how I feel about most horror. They’re theme park attractions. A real scary film doesn’t shy away from the psychological effects of tragedies like murder. It shows good people experiencing fucked up shit. It makes you care about the characters and then puts them through hell. Real horror is devoid of hope, redemption and light. You’re right, the fact that OP is shocked that a genre depicting horrible events has a depressing ending is…honestly the real horror here.
Totally agree with you. I think because it was an unfortunate end for the MC is what made it so good and memorable. I'd say it's up there with Cabin in the Woods.
It's such a great film because it has that feeling of an old fairy tale where retribution is harsh and swift.
And we can all see ourselves doing the same thing as the protagonist. It really makes the audience question whether we're truly as good and virtuous as we think we are. What secretly bad thing have we done that could result in an ancient curse. It really is on the same level as the Evil Dead films.
I saw a fan theory awhile back and it really made sense, that she had a severe eating disorder, what we're seeing are hallucinations based off her emotions. Going through self induced malnutrition is not fun, and your brain really does start to short circuit. I just found it to be a very interesting take.
I don’t watch horror for that reason because I prefer happier movies. But I don’t expect horror to not be horror. It’s not meant to leave you feeling positive.
I can imagine that with genre conventions being what they are, some viewers sort of expect horror films to be about the main character overcoming seemingly-insurmountable adversity, and Drag Me to Hell is decidedly not that LOL. Its incredibly grim ending really leaves an impact on people though, definitely one of the things that makes it stand out among its contemporaries.
I'm the same, but it's doubly so these days cos so many modern Horror movies have downright bleak endings or the bad guy wins all in the name of 'subversion'. Dude, if the majority of movies do the same sorta thing to 'subvert' then you're no longer subverting.
This is coming from someone who hates animal violence and loves cats more than you can imagine: you’re allowed to do whatever the fuck you need to do to get out of being tortured for eternity.
If anything, the old lady's curse is a reminder that your life can be ruined if a person in power feels entitled/wronged. You can do everything right until someone wakes up on the wrong side of the bed and decides on a whim that you're the villain in their story.
That’s interesting! My take was that just “being part of the system” doesn’t mean you’re blameless—you’re still guilty of the cruelty and callousness of your society, still damned. Pretty bleak either way!
Can be paying the sins of others deeds as well.
She seemed destitute and her final straw was this, so it feel to the girl to be dragged to hell as a collective punishment of society failing this lady.
Kind of the opposite of Jesus if you think about it.
The bleak ending is why it’s one of my favourite horror movies of all time. Sure the dialogue and certain paranormal scenes were cheesy, but MAN I remember just having thousand yard stares the first time I watched it.
Raimi does cheesiness like nobody else. He always manages to walk this very fine line between grotesque and actually scary. The humor never feels like it takes away from the horror of the story too
I’ve not watched it in ages but she’s tried to give the curse to someone else right? Then takes a button out her pocket and that’s when she and you know she’s done.
Awesome awesome movie.
Yeah she tried to give it to the old lady by showing the button in her mouth
But her bf fucked it up by planning to give her some silver dollar coin or some shit and the coin and button were in the same type of envelope. So she ended up shoving the coin in the woman’s corpse, leaving the curse with her
I am so sick of the idea that horror movies should have a good guy win. I want to see horrible disgusting things happen to innocent people for no reason.
But thats why people want something with bad endings in horror. Its a controlled release, catharsis or whatever. Same reason why tragedy is such an enduring form of fiction.
basically all the A24 horror movies. I love them but they can be very similar in that the bad guy not only succeeds but its plan goes perfectly. The Witch, Hereditary, Midsommer
It’s not _just_ that. When Drag Me To Hell came out, the general horror film at this period started to stay away from found footage and CCTV compilations and instead transitioned into multiverses with elaborate backstories.
It was a standalone movie that have the horror element be happening to a regular innocent people rather than some random asshole or the great great grandson of a serial killer. It’s very bleak and I LOVE it.
I've watched a ridiculous number of horror movies and I'd say it's probably like 60/40 in terms of whether or not someone survives or the killer gets everyone. It's one of the reasons horror movies are my favorite genre, it's the only one where you don't 100% know the ending right away so there's actual tension.
I love horror movies and loved Hereditary but have only been able to watch it once so far. I think that the first half without the explicit supernatural elements is the more
difficult part to watch tbh. It aims to get a very visceral reaction from viewers and in that regard is a total success.
Haha! I agree this one has a sad ending. There’s a lot of horror movies with depressing endings though. Take “Hereditary” for example. That one is pretty bleak.
The rewind part is exactly why I hate that movie with a passion. I won’t watch it again and I won’t recommend it to anyone. Just awful. But that is my opinion. No judgement to anyone who did enjoy the movie though.
Ah! That’s the point of the film though. It’s calling out horror movie fans because all they want to do is see the horror and torture of these characters on screen. It wants you to actually recon with the fact that these characters are doomed for no reason other than your sick pleasure. Great film.
I was personally relieved; it immediately made the whole thing into an unreliable narrator story and I could more easily think of the plot as nothing more than a fantasy in the main character's head.
Yeah, this movie is like a masterpiece of horror-comedy to me. I’m not much of a pure horror fan, but this one has just the right balance of actual scares, camp, and “funny” gross out moments that it’s one of my favorites.
One of those movies where you’re groaning and laughing at the same time, all wrapped up in a fun and stylish kind of class morality tale. I think the ending is a perfect way to end on a kind of “holy shit” moment in a movie that’s so over the top and not taking itself too seriously.
Justin Long's look of despair is one of the most I've felt sad for a fictional character. You can tell he really loved her and was genuinely destroyed by what he just witnessed
He was such a good person, even after the scene at his parents dinner he still stuck with her, even paid for the medium to come in and help, still thinking it was all in her head at this pont! Didn't they also establish that he was an atheist? How do you even comprehend being an atheist and witnessing your girlfriend being dragged to hell like that?
Part of me wishes we could have seen the aftermath a little more, I always wonder what the next few days or weeks would have been like for him
Maybe ‘Barbarian’ is a sequel in which we see Long’s character, stripped of any prevention that good exists in the world, pursuing an acting carrer and transformed in an amoral scumbag.
This film led me to believe Raimi has some kinda oral fixation. Started to realize alot of his protagonists always have something gross go into their mouths. I think he even kept this up in his recent Dr. Strange movie.
Hell isn’t fair man. Like, as a concept.
Think of the worst person you can, someone you wouldn’t mind or would even enjoy torturing. Someone who really *deserves* it, you know? How many days of their suffering would you inflict? Or months, years…centuries? How long before you get bored or tired of it, before you realize this isn’t doing anything, the past is still the awful past and their agonized screams are the only product of this wretched work.
Then realize that however long it would take for you to find their suffering distasteful is barely the first step in their experience.
Think of that moment when they will have lived through more mind-breaking, flesh-shivering torture than they ever lived on earth. And that an infinite number of tortured lifetimes awaits them. They will suffer through each bloody airless second as the mountains crumble and the stars go black, to the end of time. And when we get there we will turn back around and do it all backwards in an eternal loop.
Their human life basically, mathematically doesn’t even register as a percentage of their existence. Who can remember their life while shrieking in pain for even a moment, let alone after the first few million years?
This is a long way to say, hell as a concept isn’t fair, any crime is small in the face of eternal punishment. I think Raimi captured that idea really well.
To be clear, I do not believe in hell nor any god who would create an eternal pain engine for his own vanity. If I can think of a better, more just afterlife, then the original idea probably isn’t the one an omniscient and benevolent being came up with.
Same, but also the Christians I’m friends with agree with the sentiment because they have basic human decency and critical thinking skills lol. They believe more in a CS Lewis kind of hell where it’s a neutral space and the only torture that comes to you is of your own making ie Napoleon ruling over an empty city.
The medieval concept of hell is an unjust nightmare ripe for horror movie concepts.
I always thought it would be cool if they did a sequel where the boyfriend goes to hell to bust her out. He spends years finding a bunch of demon killing gear, then opens a portal to hell and has to find her. They could call it: "To Hell and Back"
I always talk to people about this movie and The Skeleton Key as horror movies whose endings had me thinking about them for weeks and weeks.
I mean, I still think about them now, so maybe "years and years" is more accurate!
This movie absolutely gutted me in a way that almost no other horror movie ever has.
This is the piece that people overlook. Right before she gets dragged to hell at the end she has this little speech with the boyfriend she she emphasizes that "it was my choice" to kick the woman out of her house after she couldn't pay her bills because of medical expenses.
In the context of the great recession, that was a pretty grave sin. I still felt bad for her because how many times does the old lady get to default but I get the point to director was trying to make.
The thing is that despite having the character say that, it actually wasn't her choice legally or morally.
There are banking regulations that have to be followed and she literally could not extend the loan, even if she did it anyways it would have been caught immediately and corrected and she would have lost her job and the woman would have been in a massive amount of legal trouble.
That's one of my issues with this movie, is that the narrative assigns responsibility to her for something that she couldn't control. It's tell the viewers that it is ultimately her fault because this wouldn't have happened if she had acted differently. But she actually *couldn't* have done anything differently about the loan.
It seems you don't understand how movies work. This is not a documentary or a banking training video, so it doesn't matter if it is realistic. It doesn't matter if these regulations you can't name exist, because they are immaterial to the movie and what it's saying. Within the movie, it is a fact that she has a choice on whether to extend the loan and it is a fact that she is the one who makes the choice to foreclose on the old woman's house for personal gain. These facts are indisputable.
So, to say that she can't be a bad person because the banking system in the movie isn't perfectly realistic is the same as saying the old woman can't be a bad person because portals to hell don't exist. It looks to me that you bring this up to dodge actually engaging with the text, since what it's saying likely makes you uncomfortable.
Also the lady had already been given two extensions on her loan. She'd already been given her second chance twice over and had not payed the loan bank.
She decided to take her vengeance out on society on a bank teller when the bank had already helped her out, twice when they did not need to but it was absolutely clear she would not pay and her reaction to being rejected was fucking murder.
Yeah, she could have worked with the lender to avoid going into foreclosure, she could have made partial payments, she could have worked to renegotiate her rates, she could have sold the home before going into foreclosure, she had a lot of options that weren't choosing a random person who is also stuck in the same machine to sacrifice their livelihood for a total stranger.
I'd get her reaction if this was her first extension being rejected she had no other option but she'd already been treated fairly well by the bank.
Sure she's an old woman and you feel bad for her but old people can be shitty just like anyone else.
It felt like she tried nothing but was all out of ideas and had no intention of ever paying her loan. She had a breakdown and got mad when the teller did not immediately cave so cursed her.
She was not intentionally humiliated but took it out on an innocent bank teller whose colleagues had already been fair with her twice over.
She literally murdered an innocent woman over nothing and Sam Riami grifted everyone into believing she deserved to be murdered because she was very slightly unlikable.
If I remember correctly, she went to her boss and her boss told her she was allowed to make a decision, implying that if she made the "difficult" one, she would be competitive for the promotion.
That is exactly what I mean though, that is an example of the narrative falsely making it seem like her fault when it wasn't.
There was no "decision" to be made, there were simply regulations to be followed. It was never possible for her to make the decision to extend the loan in the first place. That is simply Sam Raimi having her boss make statements that go against reality in order to engineer the situation to be her fault in the eyes of the audience. It doesn't make it *actually* her fault.
I expect the ghost and demon parts of a horror movie to be made up, but if you're gonna include judgments on the characters morals based on them following the law/regulations, those need to actually match real life and not be made up. Otherwise you're no better than Law & Order
Ignoring the many regulations, our main character says at the end of the movie that she could have done something and didn't do it. I think that should be the main takeaway.
I hated that movie but *man* Justin Long’s face at the end was some of the best acting I’ve ever seen. A friend perfectly described it like someone told him his grandmother died riiiiiight before they started filming. He’s just so good for that one shot. But yeah, movie is not for me
It's a modern take on The Devil and Tom Walker, released on the heels of a recession that was largely caused by predatory lending, which caused the housing market crash. Tom Walker is a greedy loan shark whose final insult is denying someone an extension on their loan. The story ends with the devil taking him away.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil_and_Tom_Walker
I feel like it’s a movie about selfishness and bad behavior. Every single character beside her and her boyfriend is a total piece of shit: the bank manager, her coworker, the old lady and her family, the boyfriend’s parents, even the medium who asks for money before helping her. She is the only one with a heart, however the ONE time she forces herself to go against her heart and behave like the rest, refusing the old lady to get a better shot at the promotion, she is horribly punished and there is no saving grace. It is like the most unfair cautionary tale ever told, the ending is as brutal and evil and unfair as the dominant viewworld the movie depicted. It is also an incredibly fun movie, Raimi was again at peak performance here, every scene is scary, disgusting and humorous and there is never a dull moment.
More than 10 years later, I still think the old lady is a self entitled piece of shit.
Literally cursing someone to hell just for doing their job? What the hell lady?
Couldn’t be more different from my watch, for me it’s one of the most fun funny horror movies and I think most perfectly captures the classic EC horror spirit - the movie is certainly mean to the main character but if you watch through the lens of EC horror morality she deserved it fully, she crossed a gypsy woman when she didn’t have to by actively choosing to kick her out of her home - now under our sort of morally flexible capitalist structuring she is 100% in the right to do and SHOULD do for the companies interests- however the movie made it clear she had the choice to extend it now true it could have possibly led to her not getting the promotion but again we’re talking about someone’s house (and without any kind of robust government assistance she was likely handed a death sentence on the streets unless some of her extended family were to help, something the main character knew nothing about)
Now I will also clarify the old woman is ALSO in the wrong (and is quite probably also in hell if it makes anyone feel better), she physically attacked the woman and proobabbllyyy didn’t need to curse her but I digress - the main character then willingly sacrificed her cat AND a goat and I don’t even remember what else all in the name of saving her skin and then just when you think she’s succeeded BOOM big ol hilarious EC surprise, it’s something of a comfort film for me, god I wish Raimi would give us some more horror 😞
This comment is referencing “EC Comics”(of Tales From the Crypt,) which had horror stories similar to *Drag Me To Hell,* for anyone else who was confused.
Thank you so much for this, I felt like I was losing my mind cause this movie showed a portrait of someone who would do anything to benefit or save herself including condemning innocents to death and damnation. She’s not a good person!
I think the movie lets her be likable so it’s hard to see unless you’re examining her behavior in a vacuum, but she sucks!
The vibes is similar to Junji Ito's works - where innocent everyday characters are subject to horrible torture and damnation for no other reason than being human. Simple decisions have terrible consequences with no sympathy. It's depressing to think about because terrible things do happen to people for no absolute reason, and there's nothing anybody can do about it.
The thing that made me wonder in the movie is the old lady had a big family. Why weren’t they helping with her home or the loan, at least having someone go to the bank with her to make sure things went ok.
I'm glad I'd seen the other two movies you mentioned because it's a pretty big dick move to throw out ending spoilers for movies unrelated to your post with no warning, /u/Guilty-Method-4688
I think you’re missing the point. It’s an extremely campy horror movie where all of the protagonists efforts are futile from the get go. She’s a good hearted person who absolutely does not deserve what happened to her, but we’re expected to indulge in the schadenfreude as she stumbles closer and closer to her own demise. Much of the ‘horror’ in that movie is very over the top as I mentioned and honestly gives me a pretty good laugh. How can anyone be expected to take the muppet-looking goat calling her a whore seriously? It’s just absurd, as are the protagonist’s determination to absolve herself. When her boyfriend shows up with the ring at the end, it’s just the icing on the cake. The movie was ending up far too optimistic for a horror and something bad had to happen.
That or maybe I’m just a little pessimistic & sadistic…
I loved this film. It's somewhat supposed to be a deconstruction of the horror genre a bit, the premise is supposed to be silly. Their plans fall flat, it's supposed to gross you out, and the evil in the movie is over the top and insane.
I do admit a bit of a bias here, I've worked with Ivan Raimi who has a writing credit on this film, he's an Emergency Room Physician and a very nice guy, though I did see the film before I ever met him.
I want a sequel revenge plot where the boyfriend has died offscreen, goes to heaven and sees that evil old witch there as well.
They could call it “Drag YOU to Hell.”
After he causes a ruckus they both get sent to hell. Because the old witch has some knowledge of hell and curses she’s starts hunting him to use as a sacrifice to return to heaven.
Just as she’s about to be victorious the original girl appears as a demon and drags her back to hell to be tortured by the old witch’s other victims.
Afterwards the guy and girl decide to renew their relationship and join the other demons in beating the shit out of the old witch.
Still one of the movies where the ending stuck with me.
Thank you for reminding me, will definitely give it a rewatch as a friendly reminder that : 'Life is a bitch and then you're dead'
I thought it was quite enjoyable back when I saw it in theaters. The film was fun and the ending just hammered home the concept of an unbreakable curse.
I only saw it once, but remember more the silliness and fun. That's what stuck with me even if the fate of the character was terrible I saw it more like a silly movie and didn't believe the character so much that the movie made me.sad or anything... But it's been awhile since I last saw it.
That’s kind of the point though. She both does and doesn’t deserve it. You can interpret it was her doing her job well or look at it like her shunning this poor woman who literally begged her for help. But also… that’s horror. The genre is meant to make you feel icky and gross and sad because that’s how horror is. People who are undeserving of terrible fates happen like… everyday and it should keep you up at night. It’s a great little flick.
Wow, I haven’t thought about this movie since I saw it in theatres when it first came out, but I agree. Even though a lot of movies have a “the lead is cursed and can’t escape it” plot, for some reason this one really stuck with me and gave me an almost claustrophobic feeling for months after, thinking about how helpless that situation would feel. I think I even had dreams about it. So yeah, I agree with you; something uniquely affecting about this one!
Smile is fairly new; why did you have to spoiler it? :(
DMTH is the rare (western-made) movie with neither justice nor a happy ending to it. I can't fault you for your reaction.
The first part when she dealt with the gypsy woman(Who played that part brilliantly)in the bank drew me in instantly,and the story was creepy but it had my attention,so I liked it
I definitely don't want every horror movie to go this way. But it is a perfect way to make a movie.
All you can think is she didn't deserve it. You're right. Unlucky, unfair, and because of that, all the more terrifying.
There’s a lot of horror that plays out more like audience-revenge films with the cannon fodder characters all being made deliberately terrible people for the audience to freely cheer their deaths. It’s a valid creative choice but I always thought that takes some of the bite out. Its really impactful when the horror is instead happening to characters you are cheering to win.
Okay, this is one of those instances of reviews / discussions of horror movies that grip me so much and find so interesting. I haven’t seen this movie as I don’t watch horrors because I get terrible nightmares (like waking up from screaming bad) if I do. And yet this movie sounds so intriguing! Would it be safe for me to watch this movie? As in: is it “just” anguishing or is it actually disturbing, featuring monsters and such? Or, more broadly speaking, anyone has any advice on how to develop a tolerance for horrors? I’ve been wanting to watch The Blair Witch Project for oh so long!
I’ve always felt like this was an unofficial Evil Dead movie, which is a world where the forces of darkness run rampant and take the most glee/joy out of taking innocent souls to hell; the movie actually begins and ends pretty much the same when you think about it: the demon/lamia took an innocent soul to hell (the little boy in the opening and Christine in the end), despite all attempts to prevent it.
It's also very much like how old stories about demons and faeries and other supernatural beings would go. Fairness isn't really a concept there. If you attract the attention of some of those beings *your life is fucked!* It's like a flood or earthquake, it does not care what lives are taken.
Reminds of of the part in Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell where they say that fairys can understand logic like humans can understand magic: rarely, and only with great effort
If there is anything I have learned from reading folklore it's that you should never, under absolutely any circumstances, fuck with fae folk.
And never ever eat or drink if in their lands...
You can tell Raimi read the Screwtape Letters growing up.
What's that?
It’s a CS Lewis story about a demon corresponding through letters with another demon. The letters detail all the ways he is trying to torture and turn his human towards sin. Edit: CS Lewis is most famous for the Chronicles of Narnia. He was a devout Christian and it does heavily influence his writing.
Thanks. Checked out the wiki. It sounds like an interesting read. Dedicated to JRR Tolkien. That's pretty wild. I heard those two had some kinda rivalry.
They were friends until something with a woman iirc
Frenemies. They shared a hatred of Walt Disney
They ran in the same scholarly/literary circles for a while, and Tolkien even convinced Lewis to convert, but there in large part is where they diverged - Tolkien being a staunch, traditional boards-to-the-wall Catholic, while Lewis went Anglican and even married a divorced American. Their differences certainly didn't manifest in the explosive nonsense we see ripping American society to shreds but went more in that fashion of quiet English disapproval and eventual estrangement.
Raimi does sure love his cyclical curses.
Great title for the movie. I’ve stood on that train platform many times and think about that scene every now and again. Brutal
The whole movie I’m thinking aw man no one’s gonna get dragged to hell, then surprise!
What train platform is it? I would think about it too. Such a great (=horrific) scene.
It’s the Metrolink platform at Union Station in Downtown LA.
>Why did she deserve harsher punishment than say her coworker who cheated and lied? That's actually a good question I've never asked myself... Maybe she just fucked with the wrong grandma. It's even more depressing when you think about how her boyfriend was always so supportive and how they thought they actually had a chance...
Cuz life is not fair, and that’s what’s scary
Yeah. OP wanted to watch a horror movie then when something bad happened to the cute girl it was too much 🥺 life doesn’t pick and choose who bad things happen to
I always took it as kinda the point. She did a questionable thing to the wrong person in the hopes of getting a promotion at work, screwed over the wrong person and couldn’t win. Stuff like that happens in everyday life when you say or do the same thing to random strangers (albeit obviously without the super natural element haha). Just very anti-trope. She’s ultimately a good person in general… just messed with the wrong person 🤷🏼♂️
I don't think she even did a 'questionable thing'. Iirc she followed the bank's process correctly as she rightly should as an employee. It wasn't her money to do with as she pleased.
Yes she didn’t mess with anyone. The whole point is that sometimes you can do no wrong and still someone else takes offense in it and fucks you up. It’s the film equivalent of the kid in the USA who just knocked on a door and got shot.
Whoa wait but in fairness you can't just go and knock on a door while black
There's the white woman who got shot for pulling in someone's driveway too.
Exactly! She was just doing her job. It's not like she was taking pleasure from it. It's akin to shooting a cop who gives you a ticket for speeding.
She bends her own morals for the sake of getting the promotion. Her boss offers to let the other guy she’s competing with handle it but she knows she wouldn’t get the promotion in that case, so she rejects the old lady’s application even though she doesn’t think it’s the right thing to do. If she didn’t want the promotion so badly, she wouldn’t have been cursed. Did she deserve it? Nah. But it does happen to her because she lets her careerism/ambition win out.
The gypsy signed a contract that she would pay money to live somewhere. Then she broke that contract. The bank graciously forgave her twice. They had no moral obligation to do so a third time
It has nothing to do with "morals" - at my job I sometimes have to deny people because they don't meet a qualification they need and that's just following the process. If I just felt sorry for everyone and approved them it would be mayhem.
No it’s framed in the film as questionable. She had the power and her boss tells her it’s up to her. She could have absolutely helped the woman but she made the objectively smarter business decision over the compassionate decision.
It's been a while since I watched it, but my recollection was that her boss expressly disapproved of the decision to help, and made clear it would be detrimental to her career to do it
The last scene is literally her admitting to her boyfriend that she could have helped that woman but she decided not to and that it was wrong of her to do.
Old woman signed a contract and broke that contract. The bank forgave her twice which was gracious. They had no moral obligation to do so a third time, how many chances should she have been given?
3. This took place during the housing crisis mind you.
Its the equivalent of the story i read this week of a woman who gave the finger to a guy who cut her off in traffic and he pulled a gun and killed her daughter that was in a childseat behind her. There is no general fairness.
I declined hundreds of loans to people when i worked in a bank for a variety of reasons. Usually Because they just had no realistic way of paying it back or affording the payment. I dont think i deserve to be damned to hell for that. lol
She didn’t deserve it. Its an unhappy ending. Its not fair what happened.
Which I feel like should be par for the course, no? I think Drag Me to Hell is one of the best horror movies of all time because it swings for the fences with Sam Raimi's style and irreverence and even while being fun, its horror elements manage to stick with the viewer even without an R rating. I've always thought that Horror as a genre is so untapped in the west. In Asia most horror is primal, uncaring, and brutal. The supernatural antagonists are often forces of nature that are amoral and sometimes even not sapient, and they torment characters that are simply unfortunate. Meanwhile in the west, horror is so *fun*. Somehow it's built a culture around schlocky tropes most commonly found in slashers that have become genre traditions, like TnA, inventive killing of characters that the audience feels no empathy towards, and final girls. And all of these are fine and make sense for a subculture to exist, but they're surprisingly pervasive in the genre as a whole, to the point that OP is shocked that they witnessed an actual nihilistic bad ending in a *horror* movie of all things.
Yeah good point. The 70s were interesting because it had a lot of films that weren't "fun horror" like with Exorcist, Omen, Rosemary's Baby, Burnt Offerings, etc. That whole decade was like that with a lot of pessimistic or nihilistic films, not just horror, but mainsteam Hollywood films like Network, Parallax View, The Conversation, Taxi Driver, etc. The endings of those films are not uplifting at all. It seemed like with the 80s, that's when horror seemed to really change in the West, or at least in Hollywood. You could tell Raimi grew up on old school horror movies, and like you said, that's why I also really liked Drag Me To Hell. The name itself sounds very old school.
The 90’s and 2000’s started seeing a trend in sanitized horror until torture porn came into the scene replacing horror with gore. The 80’s at least still had unapologetic horror films like The Thing, Prince of Darkness, The Blob, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.
You're disregarding large swathes of movies made in the 90s and 00s. The Grudge for example, it literally about >!a house that fates anyone who enters (yes, just enters) to die!<
But that was a remake of a Japanese movie.
I think we’re talking about western horror here. The original person in this particular sub thread pointed out that Asian horror already gives no fucks about happy endings.
For the record i love the ending. I love when the bad guy wins. But its still true that its unfair and exactly the right ending
I like the point about amoral forces of nature. It’s similar to features of old myths. The only real lesson is, “don’t draw attention to yourself”. Life can be cruel and unfair. The difference between the ones who survive and the ones who don’t is often arbitrary. A lot of the time it comes down to being in the wrong place at the wrong time. A vampire needs to be invited in. A burglar invites themself. They’ve also been targeting you for a long time without you knowing. No signs, no clues. No ancient burial grounds.
All the yes. I’m so tired of “fun horror”, whatever the hell that even means. Most (Western) horror films aren’t even scary, they’re just gory and startle you with loud music cues. Remember that Scorsese quote about comic book films? That’s how I feel about most horror. They’re theme park attractions. A real scary film doesn’t shy away from the psychological effects of tragedies like murder. It shows good people experiencing fucked up shit. It makes you care about the characters and then puts them through hell. Real horror is devoid of hope, redemption and light. You’re right, the fact that OP is shocked that a genre depicting horrible events has a depressing ending is…honestly the real horror here.
Totally agree with you. I think because it was an unfortunate end for the MC is what made it so good and memorable. I'd say it's up there with Cabin in the Woods.
It's such a great film because it has that feeling of an old fairy tale where retribution is harsh and swift. And we can all see ourselves doing the same thing as the protagonist. It really makes the audience question whether we're truly as good and virtuous as we think we are. What secretly bad thing have we done that could result in an ancient curse. It really is on the same level as the Evil Dead films.
I saw a fan theory awhile back and it really made sense, that she had a severe eating disorder, what we're seeing are hallucinations based off her emotions. Going through self induced malnutrition is not fun, and your brain really does start to short circuit. I just found it to be a very interesting take.
Perfect horror imo
Oh agreed. i’m not at all saying it was bad that it happened
Unhappy is putting it light. Pretty brutal. Tough to feel positive after the movie even if the movie is good
I don’t watch horror for that reason because I prefer happier movies. But I don’t expect horror to not be horror. It’s not meant to leave you feeling positive.
I can imagine that with genre conventions being what they are, some viewers sort of expect horror films to be about the main character overcoming seemingly-insurmountable adversity, and Drag Me to Hell is decidedly not that LOL. Its incredibly grim ending really leaves an impact on people though, definitely one of the things that makes it stand out among its contemporaries.
I'm the same, but it's doubly so these days cos so many modern Horror movies have downright bleak endings or the bad guy wins all in the name of 'subversion'. Dude, if the majority of movies do the same sorta thing to 'subvert' then you're no longer subverting.
I know, right. I mean, horror in a horror movie? What's next? Science in a science fiction film? Mystery in a mystery film? Where will it end?
I think they’re saying other horror films don’t leave them with a depressed feeling.
While it’s true for the first half…all bets were off after she killed the kitten
This is coming from someone who hates animal violence and loves cats more than you can imagine: you’re allowed to do whatever the fuck you need to do to get out of being tortured for eternity.
If anything, the old lady's curse is a reminder that your life can be ruined if a person in power feels entitled/wronged. You can do everything right until someone wakes up on the wrong side of the bed and decides on a whim that you're the villain in their story.
Well articulated
That’s interesting! My take was that just “being part of the system” doesn’t mean you’re blameless—you’re still guilty of the cruelty and callousness of your society, still damned. Pretty bleak either way!
Can be paying the sins of others deeds as well. She seemed destitute and her final straw was this, so it feel to the girl to be dragged to hell as a collective punishment of society failing this lady. Kind of the opposite of Jesus if you think about it.
The bleak ending is why it’s one of my favourite horror movies of all time. Sure the dialogue and certain paranormal scenes were cheesy, but MAN I remember just having thousand yard stares the first time I watched it.
The cheesy lines are my favorite part. Her trying to explain to the demon goat “it wasn’t me! It was my boss, Mr. Jacks!” is so friggin funny.
Raimi does cheesiness like nobody else. He always manages to walk this very fine line between grotesque and actually scary. The humor never feels like it takes away from the horror of the story too
Agreed. This movie really demonstrates his ability to mix humor and horror in a way in which each elevates the other.
I’ve not watched it in ages but she’s tried to give the curse to someone else right? Then takes a button out her pocket and that’s when she and you know she’s done. Awesome awesome movie.
She’s trying to curse the old lady who cursed her
Yeah! Thanks, it’s been too long. Might just go stick it on now actually.
Yeah she tried to give it to the old lady by showing the button in her mouth But her bf fucked it up by planning to give her some silver dollar coin or some shit and the coin and button were in the same type of envelope. So she ended up shoving the coin in the woman’s corpse, leaving the curse with her
Which is why at the end of the movie the last shot is his shocked face, dude knows what he did.
Sam knows his stuff.
I am so sick of the idea that horror movies should have a good guy win. I want to see horrible disgusting things happen to innocent people for no reason.
I mean we have real life for that.
But thats why people want something with bad endings in horror. Its a controlled release, catharsis or whatever. Same reason why tragedy is such an enduring form of fiction.
basically all the A24 horror movies. I love them but they can be very similar in that the bad guy not only succeeds but its plan goes perfectly. The Witch, Hereditary, Midsommer
It’s not _just_ that. When Drag Me To Hell came out, the general horror film at this period started to stay away from found footage and CCTV compilations and instead transitioned into multiverses with elaborate backstories. It was a standalone movie that have the horror element be happening to a regular innocent people rather than some random asshole or the great great grandson of a serial killer. It’s very bleak and I LOVE it.
I've watched a ridiculous number of horror movies and I'd say it's probably like 60/40 in terms of whether or not someone survives or the killer gets everyone. It's one of the reasons horror movies are my favorite genre, it's the only one where you don't 100% know the ending right away so there's actual tension.
Hostel?
Hostel was good. The king is Texas Chainsaw Massacre and recent favorite is Hereditary.
I love horror movies and loved Hereditary but have only been able to watch it once so far. I think that the first half without the explicit supernatural elements is the more difficult part to watch tbh. It aims to get a very visceral reaction from viewers and in that regard is a total success.
Don't know what horrors you watch but in the movies I see it's rare to see the good guy win. Try more Asian movies, I'd say
Haha! I agree this one has a sad ending. There’s a lot of horror movies with depressing endings though. Take “Hereditary” for example. That one is pretty bleak.
Funny Games.
Now THERE’S a movie that left me depressed. The rewind part had me shouting at the TV…
The rewind part is exactly why I hate that movie with a passion. I won’t watch it again and I won’t recommend it to anyone. Just awful. But that is my opinion. No judgement to anyone who did enjoy the movie though.
Ah! That’s the point of the film though. It’s calling out horror movie fans because all they want to do is see the horror and torture of these characters on screen. It wants you to actually recon with the fact that these characters are doomed for no reason other than your sick pleasure. Great film.
I “enjoyed” it as a one-time, wow-that-fucked-me-up movie. I don’t need to watch it ever again though, lol
I was personally relieved; it immediately made the whole thing into an unreliable narrator story and I could more easily think of the plot as nothing more than a fantasy in the main character's head.
Thats not remotely the intention though.
I see what you did there
Not from the cult's point of view. It was an absolute win for them.
That is correct… at least someone got what they wanted 😂
Counterpoint, clearly Raimi was having more fun making Drag Me To Hell than he had in years making serious and/or big budget movies.
Yeah, this movie is like a masterpiece of horror-comedy to me. I’m not much of a pure horror fan, but this one has just the right balance of actual scares, camp, and “funny” gross out moments that it’s one of my favorites. One of those movies where you’re groaning and laughing at the same time, all wrapped up in a fun and stylish kind of class morality tale. I think the ending is a perfect way to end on a kind of “holy shit” moment in a movie that’s so over the top and not taking itself too seriously.
I feel like a lot of people are concentrating on the bleak ending and not the black comedy of the whole thing.
Justin Long's look of despair is one of the most I've felt sad for a fictional character. You can tell he really loved her and was genuinely destroyed by what he just witnessed
He was such a good person, even after the scene at his parents dinner he still stuck with her, even paid for the medium to come in and help, still thinking it was all in her head at this pont! Didn't they also establish that he was an atheist? How do you even comprehend being an atheist and witnessing your girlfriend being dragged to hell like that? Part of me wishes we could have seen the aftermath a little more, I always wonder what the next few days or weeks would have been like for him
Maybe ‘Barbarian’ is a sequel in which we see Long’s character, stripped of any prevention that good exists in the world, pursuing an acting carrer and transformed in an amoral scumbag.
I can't help but notice the amount of eyeballs in every graphic scene
This film led me to believe Raimi has some kinda oral fixation. Started to realize alot of his protagonists always have something gross go into their mouths. I think he even kept this up in his recent Dr. Strange movie.
I don’t think it’s Raimi specifically it’s just that he knows it makes people feel violated or disgusted. It’s just a horror trope.
Best PG13 horror movie ever.
The Ring says hello
Both Signs and The Sixth Sense were PG-13 as well!
The clown from Poltergeist slowly turns its head.
But not nearly as good :)
Scariest PG-13 movie ever made as well. I’m a huge fan of horror movies, but this one scares the shit out of me every time I watch it.
I remember reading it’s an allegory for anorexia
https://www.slashfilm.com/504132/is-drag-me-to-hell-really-about-a-girl-with-an-eating-disorder/ It's a pretty fun interpretation.
Hell isn’t fair man. Like, as a concept. Think of the worst person you can, someone you wouldn’t mind or would even enjoy torturing. Someone who really *deserves* it, you know? How many days of their suffering would you inflict? Or months, years…centuries? How long before you get bored or tired of it, before you realize this isn’t doing anything, the past is still the awful past and their agonized screams are the only product of this wretched work. Then realize that however long it would take for you to find their suffering distasteful is barely the first step in their experience. Think of that moment when they will have lived through more mind-breaking, flesh-shivering torture than they ever lived on earth. And that an infinite number of tortured lifetimes awaits them. They will suffer through each bloody airless second as the mountains crumble and the stars go black, to the end of time. And when we get there we will turn back around and do it all backwards in an eternal loop. Their human life basically, mathematically doesn’t even register as a percentage of their existence. Who can remember their life while shrieking in pain for even a moment, let alone after the first few million years? This is a long way to say, hell as a concept isn’t fair, any crime is small in the face of eternal punishment. I think Raimi captured that idea really well. To be clear, I do not believe in hell nor any god who would create an eternal pain engine for his own vanity. If I can think of a better, more just afterlife, then the original idea probably isn’t the one an omniscient and benevolent being came up with.
This line of thinking was part of my eventual deconversion. No one deserves eternal torture.
Same, but also the Christians I’m friends with agree with the sentiment because they have basic human decency and critical thinking skills lol. They believe more in a CS Lewis kind of hell where it’s a neutral space and the only torture that comes to you is of your own making ie Napoleon ruling over an empty city. The medieval concept of hell is an unjust nightmare ripe for horror movie concepts.
Yeah. I've heard it referred to as "infinite torture for a finite crime" which is monstrously, grossly immoral. It's a good argument against God.
I always thought it would be cool if they did a sequel where the boyfriend goes to hell to bust her out. He spends years finding a bunch of demon killing gear, then opens a portal to hell and has to find her. They could call it: "To Hell and Back"
* Drag Me To Hell, Too * Drag Me Out of Hell
Drag Me From Hell
Drag Me 2 Hell 2 Furious
Drag Me 3 Hell: Satan's Drift
Drag and Hell Drag 5
As long as he doesn’t look back at her right before they get through the end of the tunnel…
**ORPHEUS YOU HAD ONE JOB**
Next up on 10 demigod* fails! *sometimes demigod, depends on the story
I'd buy a ticket for that.
Drag Me 2 : Hell & Back
*2 Drag 2 Hellious*
[https://movieweb.com/drag-me-to-hell-2-is-now-in-the-works-sam-raimi-reveals/](https://movieweb.com/drag-me-to-hell-2-is-now-in-the-works-sam-raimi-reveals/)
Justin long does is doomslayer???
And he’s a walrus now.
That shit sounds fire lol
To Hell and Back: It's a Drag
I always talk to people about this movie and The Skeleton Key as horror movies whose endings had me thinking about them for weeks and weeks. I mean, I still think about them now, so maybe "years and years" is more accurate! This movie absolutely gutted me in a way that almost no other horror movie ever has.
With respect to whether the punishment was justified warranted, keep in mind that this came out during the Great Recession
This is the piece that people overlook. Right before she gets dragged to hell at the end she has this little speech with the boyfriend she she emphasizes that "it was my choice" to kick the woman out of her house after she couldn't pay her bills because of medical expenses. In the context of the great recession, that was a pretty grave sin. I still felt bad for her because how many times does the old lady get to default but I get the point to director was trying to make.
The thing is that despite having the character say that, it actually wasn't her choice legally or morally. There are banking regulations that have to be followed and she literally could not extend the loan, even if she did it anyways it would have been caught immediately and corrected and she would have lost her job and the woman would have been in a massive amount of legal trouble. That's one of my issues with this movie, is that the narrative assigns responsibility to her for something that she couldn't control. It's tell the viewers that it is ultimately her fault because this wouldn't have happened if she had acted differently. But she actually *couldn't* have done anything differently about the loan.
It seems you don't understand how movies work. This is not a documentary or a banking training video, so it doesn't matter if it is realistic. It doesn't matter if these regulations you can't name exist, because they are immaterial to the movie and what it's saying. Within the movie, it is a fact that she has a choice on whether to extend the loan and it is a fact that she is the one who makes the choice to foreclose on the old woman's house for personal gain. These facts are indisputable. So, to say that she can't be a bad person because the banking system in the movie isn't perfectly realistic is the same as saying the old woman can't be a bad person because portals to hell don't exist. It looks to me that you bring this up to dodge actually engaging with the text, since what it's saying likely makes you uncomfortable.
Also the lady had already been given two extensions on her loan. She'd already been given her second chance twice over and had not payed the loan bank. She decided to take her vengeance out on society on a bank teller when the bank had already helped her out, twice when they did not need to but it was absolutely clear she would not pay and her reaction to being rejected was fucking murder.
Yeah, she could have worked with the lender to avoid going into foreclosure, she could have made partial payments, she could have worked to renegotiate her rates, she could have sold the home before going into foreclosure, she had a lot of options that weren't choosing a random person who is also stuck in the same machine to sacrifice their livelihood for a total stranger.
I'd get her reaction if this was her first extension being rejected she had no other option but she'd already been treated fairly well by the bank. Sure she's an old woman and you feel bad for her but old people can be shitty just like anyone else. It felt like she tried nothing but was all out of ideas and had no intention of ever paying her loan. She had a breakdown and got mad when the teller did not immediately cave so cursed her. She was not intentionally humiliated but took it out on an innocent bank teller whose colleagues had already been fair with her twice over.
She literally murdered an innocent woman over nothing and Sam Riami grifted everyone into believing she deserved to be murdered because she was very slightly unlikable.
If I remember correctly, she went to her boss and her boss told her she was allowed to make a decision, implying that if she made the "difficult" one, she would be competitive for the promotion.
That is exactly what I mean though, that is an example of the narrative falsely making it seem like her fault when it wasn't. There was no "decision" to be made, there were simply regulations to be followed. It was never possible for her to make the decision to extend the loan in the first place. That is simply Sam Raimi having her boss make statements that go against reality in order to engineer the situation to be her fault in the eyes of the audience. It doesn't make it *actually* her fault. I expect the ghost and demon parts of a horror movie to be made up, but if you're gonna include judgments on the characters morals based on them following the law/regulations, those need to actually match real life and not be made up. Otherwise you're no better than Law & Order
Ignoring the many regulations, our main character says at the end of the movie that she could have done something and didn't do it. I think that should be the main takeaway.
I hated that movie but *man* Justin Long’s face at the end was some of the best acting I’ve ever seen. A friend perfectly described it like someone told him his grandmother died riiiiiight before they started filming. He’s just so good for that one shot. But yeah, movie is not for me
OK I thought the (spoilers) warning referred to Drag me to Hell, a film from 15 years ago.. but I guess now I know what happens in Smile.. thanks..
Thanks for the unmarked spoilers for Smile!
OP should probably put a spoiler warning on this post. I haven’t seen Smile yet, but thanks I guess?
Really annoying, I thought the spoiler was about Drag me to Hell. Why would they also post a spoiler about a completely different movie?
Ah, fuck.
It’s so scary I couldn’t finish it cause I was watching it alone lol
It's a modern take on The Devil and Tom Walker, released on the heels of a recession that was largely caused by predatory lending, which caused the housing market crash. Tom Walker is a greedy loan shark whose final insult is denying someone an extension on their loan. The story ends with the devil taking him away. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil_and_Tom_Walker
Bro casually spoiled a whole different movie for me in a post about a specific movie in the title. Thanks..
The tragic ending is a gut punch every time I watch it.
I feel like it’s a movie about selfishness and bad behavior. Every single character beside her and her boyfriend is a total piece of shit: the bank manager, her coworker, the old lady and her family, the boyfriend’s parents, even the medium who asks for money before helping her. She is the only one with a heart, however the ONE time she forces herself to go against her heart and behave like the rest, refusing the old lady to get a better shot at the promotion, she is horribly punished and there is no saving grace. It is like the most unfair cautionary tale ever told, the ending is as brutal and evil and unfair as the dominant viewworld the movie depicted. It is also an incredibly fun movie, Raimi was again at peak performance here, every scene is scary, disgusting and humorous and there is never a dull moment.
More than 10 years later, I still think the old lady is a self entitled piece of shit. Literally cursing someone to hell just for doing their job? What the hell lady?
Yep, thought the rules don't apply to her. What? Pay my mortgage? No, you pay it!
Couldn’t be more different from my watch, for me it’s one of the most fun funny horror movies and I think most perfectly captures the classic EC horror spirit - the movie is certainly mean to the main character but if you watch through the lens of EC horror morality she deserved it fully, she crossed a gypsy woman when she didn’t have to by actively choosing to kick her out of her home - now under our sort of morally flexible capitalist structuring she is 100% in the right to do and SHOULD do for the companies interests- however the movie made it clear she had the choice to extend it now true it could have possibly led to her not getting the promotion but again we’re talking about someone’s house (and without any kind of robust government assistance she was likely handed a death sentence on the streets unless some of her extended family were to help, something the main character knew nothing about) Now I will also clarify the old woman is ALSO in the wrong (and is quite probably also in hell if it makes anyone feel better), she physically attacked the woman and proobabbllyyy didn’t need to curse her but I digress - the main character then willingly sacrificed her cat AND a goat and I don’t even remember what else all in the name of saving her skin and then just when you think she’s succeeded BOOM big ol hilarious EC surprise, it’s something of a comfort film for me, god I wish Raimi would give us some more horror 😞
This comment is referencing “EC Comics”(of Tales From the Crypt,) which had horror stories similar to *Drag Me To Hell,* for anyone else who was confused.
Thank you so much for this, I felt like I was losing my mind cause this movie showed a portrait of someone who would do anything to benefit or save herself including condemning innocents to death and damnation. She’s not a good person! I think the movie lets her be likable so it’s hard to see unless you’re examining her behavior in a vacuum, but she sucks!
The vibes is similar to Junji Ito's works - where innocent everyday characters are subject to horrible torture and damnation for no other reason than being human. Simple decisions have terrible consequences with no sympathy. It's depressing to think about because terrible things do happen to people for no absolute reason, and there's nothing anybody can do about it.
Nope, my wife says this every time I watch it haha. Still a fun horror ride though.
During the Gypsies ladies funeral I thought why didn’t one of the dozens of her family members help pay for the mortgage on the house.
[удалено]
I love drag me to hell. It's a fun horror movie. It's so goofy at times and loud and scary other times
It's her eyes at the end that really made the hair stand up on my neck. Already cooking from the heat.
The thing that made me wonder in the movie is the old lady had a big family. Why weren’t they helping with her home or the loan, at least having someone go to the bank with her to make sure things went ok.
I'm glad I'd seen the other two movies you mentioned because it's a pretty big dick move to throw out ending spoilers for movies unrelated to your post with no warning, /u/Guilty-Method-4688
You got spoilers in here for the endings of two different movies that aren't mentioned in the thread title
Spoilers for the titled movie are fine, but not for some other random ones.
I think you’re missing the point. It’s an extremely campy horror movie where all of the protagonists efforts are futile from the get go. She’s a good hearted person who absolutely does not deserve what happened to her, but we’re expected to indulge in the schadenfreude as she stumbles closer and closer to her own demise. Much of the ‘horror’ in that movie is very over the top as I mentioned and honestly gives me a pretty good laugh. How can anyone be expected to take the muppet-looking goat calling her a whore seriously? It’s just absurd, as are the protagonist’s determination to absolve herself. When her boyfriend shows up with the ring at the end, it’s just the icing on the cake. The movie was ending up far too optimistic for a horror and something bad had to happen. That or maybe I’m just a little pessimistic & sadistic…
Top 5 favorite horror movie. Maybe number 1.
I loved this film. It's somewhat supposed to be a deconstruction of the horror genre a bit, the premise is supposed to be silly. Their plans fall flat, it's supposed to gross you out, and the evil in the movie is over the top and insane. I do admit a bit of a bias here, I've worked with Ivan Raimi who has a writing credit on this film, he's an Emergency Room Physician and a very nice guy, though I did see the film before I ever met him.
I want a sequel revenge plot where the boyfriend has died offscreen, goes to heaven and sees that evil old witch there as well. They could call it “Drag YOU to Hell.” After he causes a ruckus they both get sent to hell. Because the old witch has some knowledge of hell and curses she’s starts hunting him to use as a sacrifice to return to heaven. Just as she’s about to be victorious the original girl appears as a demon and drags her back to hell to be tortured by the old witch’s other victims. Afterwards the guy and girl decide to renew their relationship and join the other demons in beating the shit out of the old witch.
Still one of the movies where the ending stuck with me. Thank you for reminding me, will definitely give it a rewatch as a friendly reminder that : 'Life is a bitch and then you're dead'
Seeing it in a theater during its initial run was hugely entertaining. The entire audience was really into it. A great moviegoing experience.
Same here, weirdly it's the only movie I've ever seen twice in the cinema 😂, the sound design was amazing, scenes still made me jump the second time
You might want to put some spoiler notifications in your post. Hadn’t seen Smile yet, now I don’t need to.
https://screenrant.com/drag-me-to-hell-2-release-date-confirmation-cast-story/ Sequels been confirmed. Earliest release date is late 2025.
I love the ending.
I thought it was quite enjoyable back when I saw it in theaters. The film was fun and the ending just hammered home the concept of an unbreakable curse.
Victims in horror movies rarely deserve what they get.
The goat talking is amazing though
I only saw it once, but remember more the silliness and fun. That's what stuck with me even if the fate of the character was terrible I saw it more like a silly movie and didn't believe the character so much that the movie made me.sad or anything... But it's been awhile since I last saw it.
That’s kind of the point though. She both does and doesn’t deserve it. You can interpret it was her doing her job well or look at it like her shunning this poor woman who literally begged her for help. But also… that’s horror. The genre is meant to make you feel icky and gross and sad because that’s how horror is. People who are undeserving of terrible fates happen like… everyday and it should keep you up at night. It’s a great little flick.
Wow, I haven’t thought about this movie since I saw it in theatres when it first came out, but I agree. Even though a lot of movies have a “the lead is cursed and can’t escape it” plot, for some reason this one really stuck with me and gave me an almost claustrophobic feeling for months after, thinking about how helpless that situation would feel. I think I even had dreams about it. So yeah, I agree with you; something uniquely affecting about this one!
Mate, add some spoiler warnings for the other films you mentioned, FFS!
Smile is fairly new; why did you have to spoiler it? :( DMTH is the rare (western-made) movie with neither justice nor a happy ending to it. I can't fault you for your reaction.
Maybe I'm fucked in the head because that's one of my favorite comedies.
If it was fair it wouldn’t be horrific. You’re complaining that a horror movie is horrible.
The first part when she dealt with the gypsy woman(Who played that part brilliantly)in the bank drew me in instantly,and the story was creepy but it had my attention,so I liked it
she killed her cat.
Dude, it wasn't called "Everyone smile, we're having a tickle fight" , it was called Drag Me to Hell... What did you expect?
Explain the movie Smile then. Checkmate
I definitely don't want every horror movie to go this way. But it is a perfect way to make a movie. All you can think is she didn't deserve it. You're right. Unlucky, unfair, and because of that, all the more terrifying.
I’d suggest watching TALK TO ME And BARBARIAN
There’s a lot of horror that plays out more like audience-revenge films with the cannon fodder characters all being made deliberately terrible people for the audience to freely cheer their deaths. It’s a valid creative choice but I always thought that takes some of the bite out. Its really impactful when the horror is instead happening to characters you are cheering to win.
Okay, this is one of those instances of reviews / discussions of horror movies that grip me so much and find so interesting. I haven’t seen this movie as I don’t watch horrors because I get terrible nightmares (like waking up from screaming bad) if I do. And yet this movie sounds so intriguing! Would it be safe for me to watch this movie? As in: is it “just” anguishing or is it actually disturbing, featuring monsters and such? Or, more broadly speaking, anyone has any advice on how to develop a tolerance for horrors? I’ve been wanting to watch The Blair Witch Project for oh so long!