I’ve written before about why I love horror movies. I recently (finally!) caught Drag Me to Hell and really loved it. It’s a fun, nasty, completely un-clichéd thrill ride of a movie, but what I really liked about it was the ending, about which I will speak in spoilerific detail below.
If you haven’t seen the movie yet, please enjoy the trailer!
Okay, so at the end when she is, in fact, dragged to hell because she shoved the quarter rather than the button into the mouth of the dead gypsy woman, I laughed aloud in the way you often will when somebody gets you with a good joke. I really liked the way they flashed the title onto the screen right at the end as if to remind you how stupid you’d been: “it’s called Drag Me To Hell! Did you really think she wouldn’t get dragged to hell?” And the more I thought about this ending, the more I liked it.
Because it tells a truth that most entertainment doesn’t get to tell. She accepts responsibility for the bad thing she did, she reveals herself to be a fundamentally good person (she won’t condemn even the lying weasel who’s her rival at work to be dragged to hell by foisting the button off on him), and she fights heroically for her survival. And she gets dragged to hell anyway. Because sometimes that’s what happens.
The myth of entertainment, and, indeed, the myth that animates a lot of our thinking about adversity is that it is something to be triumphed over. But sometimes adversity crushes or kills you. Sometimes there is no redemption. Sometimes you can’t be saved. I suppose there are other movies in other genres that explore this same idea, but when they do, they are incredible downers. Shanghai Triad comes to mind—fantastic movie, and the ending is just devastating. These are not the kind of movies you really want to go out and see for fun on a Saturday night. But this movie gave me an incredibly downbeat ending and had me actually laughing with delight. That’s a pretty neat trick.
