The Court of Anger

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I finally watched Drag Me to Hell.  Now that I own it and Changing Lanes, I need a third film for my trilogy: Awesome Movies, Badly Advertised. 

Drag Me being an instant classic, and not a boring CG fest or blondesploitation, it got me thinking about the mechanics of revenge.

Revenge is the oldest and best motive for horror.  But when is it justified? When, like Frankenstien’s monster, can we admit the Horror has a point?

First, Jason doesn't count. Scream made a name for itself by analyzing the Slasher Laws, which basically amount to pubescent guilt and luck taboos. It's established that Jigsaw and Freddy act as audience inserts, chopping up people we consider to be pricks, or too pretty, or out of line. That’s barely horror. That's gossip with a machete.

Real monster revenge is a big genre. Besides Frankenstein, you have subtle, American gothic horror like The Telltale Heart and The Bones. Sci-Fi classics like “I Have no Mouth…” or “Second Variety” judge our entire species as deserving of revenge. Romero’s zombie movies present social-justice-by-monster.*

Alllll we are saying, is give peace a BRAAAAINS.

But the classic story is about wronging social outcasts, and trying to get away with it, or hiding a murder. Freaks is in the canon of Universal movies, and has midgets and bearded ladies stalking their abusive owners, Predator-style. Jealous corpses will always find ex-friends or spouses. And I love Thinner, where a poor bastard compounds the horror by running over an old gypsy woman and then trying to hide the murder. Which is like sending a formal invitation to Lucifer, return address: your colon. Never kill an old gypsy.

Or steal. Never steal from an old gypsy either.

But … what if you just … inconvenience one? Hold her up in the immigration process? Give her a bad deal on some stereo parts? I’m not sure that deserves the torments of Beelzebub. It’s one thing to assuage our guilt by telling stories where outcasts avenge clear wrongs, but play that out. How would things really go if all scorned housewives, maligned shlubs and Gypsies got to play Judge Dredd with the supernatural?

This is where Drag Me to Hell gets brilliant. 

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There are several big twists and I won’t spoil them, but the premise is simple. The old gypsy is denied an extension on her mortgage loan. The protag is the loan officer, who is caught up in a promotion battle. She is pressured to deny the loan to prove she can be a ruthless VP. So it’s kind of a dick move on her part. Throwing an old lady out of her home, and into a retirement complex or her daughter’s couch.

So the old coot nukes her soul.

Seriously. For this crime, the loan officer is set upon by a Greater Fiend of Darkness, who will first torture and humiliate her in life, then you know … drag her to Hell.

Her battle to shake the demon pulls in family, friends, and several kinds of shaman. There could be ways to appease it, trick it, pass the curse onto others by abusing the terms. The movie is half murderfest and half a comedy of manners. And if this all sounds like porn to a guy who said Magic Needs Rules, then you must have your ears on.

A shakeable curse is one thing, right? The gypsy flat-out says “now you will beg me”, with the “see how it feels” implied. But as the ultimate punishment creeps closer, and the bodies start piling up … the film gets more and more uncomfortable. Where’s the folk justice in killing third parties? Or a curse with loopholes that sends other, guiltless people to Hell? Of eternal torment, for a bureaucratic slight? Have the Roma never heard of “proportionate response”?
 

5:35-5:50. I need a better edit...

No. They haven’t. Maybe that’s why we abandoned folk justice in the first place. Maybe that’s why the road to modern law was so long and difficult.

Because once you take the gypsy’s gripe out of it, the real threat is this creature of pure rage, that doesn’t care for arguments. Rage like the rage of Achilles, or the ten plagues. Revenge oaths that pull in sons and distant cousins. The rage of one lucky person, who gets to set their own price.

Wait, this reminds me of something.

Why me! I like ... knew a guy who knew a guy!!! AARGH

Drag Me to Hell doesn't compromise on this vision. In the end, two fallible people are trying to solve a modern quarrel, with demons. This results in a movie that questions horror catharsis itself. Sam Raimi is an old player at this game, so I’m sure it’s deliberate.

A Pocahontas rant could break out any time here. Because people are downtrodden, or provincial, or weak, does that make them saints? Isn’t assuming their sainthood as deluded as making them out to be devils? A theme that crawls lazily through revenge horror is that modern “justice” is a joke. That it would be better if clear evil were punished with clear revenge. So these stories give outcasts all the power, and fantasize that unjust lives have given them perfect insight in how to judge. Which is about as stupid as wishing “innocent children” ran the world.

Whee! Do it again!

Shakespeare already tackled this one. By far the best thing I have to say about Drag Me to Hell, is it’s a Monster Merchant of Venice. That after he’s laughed and pissed himself for two hours, the viewer can wind up a little outraged, and a little grateful for slow, limited means of getting your way. For bloody centuries that taught us

Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy to each other.

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*Which tellingly got more unhinged, more Latino nationalist, and more Jew-baiting as he kept making movies …