Christine Brown, a mild mannered loan officer—some
may even venture to refer to her as “timid” or “wilting” or “generally
terrified”—really wants the assistant manager position at her bank. Because her
boss is played by David Paymer, she’s forced into a passive aggressive
competition with another less-experienced but more minoritied co-worker, Stu
Rubin (Reggie Lee), whose obsequiousness and under-handed-osity knows no
bounds. Her boss tells her that the ideal candidate for that coveted position
is someone who can “make the tough decisions”. Apparently, she’s been far too
helpful and compassionate with her loans of late and it’s implied heavily that
those attributes are frowned upon.
So enter Mrs. Sylvia Ganush, a fairly revolting
and elderly Hungarian woman with one blind eye and an underwater-mortgage.
While begging for an extension of credit, Mrs. Ganush coughs up gobs of lung
into a stained handkerchief, places her false teeth on Christine’s desk and
then empties the entirety of the mint dish into her purse. Since it’s easier to
be compassionate to the non-disgusting, Christine makes the “tough call” and
tells Mrs. Ganush that there’s no possible way to extend her credit any further.
While that is not entirely true, let’s be a little realistic here. Ganush has
already received a multitude of extensions and is obviously living beyond her
means. Plus, you know: ew, slimy dentures
on the desk! After receiving this news, Mrs. Ganush does what comes to her
mind: first she begs on her knees then, when that fails, she attempts to
strangle Christine.
Shaken but certain that she’d impressed David
Paymer by surviving a gypsy assault, Christine leaves for the day. In the
garage, the old bat attacks her again, in Christine’s own car! This in no way
helps Ganush’s case and Christine is forced to defend herself with a Swingline,
managing to even staple Ganush’s dead eye shut before kicking the car into gear
and ultimately crashing. After getting kicked out of the car five or six times,
the old gypsy finally gets what she came for: a button from Christine’s coat
sleeve! With this button, she curses the loan officer and hands the object
back.
Now, for all of Christine’s timidity and naivete
and humanity, she does have the majority of her life together, despite the fact
that she’s dating a guy played by Justin Long who collects coins. She brings
him food, a rare coin she found in circulation (a 1902 nickel with an
imperfection of George Washington making out with Abe Lincoln or something)
(I’m kidding; it’s a “standing liberty” quarter, far less rare than the other
one I described), and endures his side of a conversation with his mother where
he’s obviously defending her past as an overweight farm girl. But after her
near-fatal gumming by Ganesh, practicality is thrown to the wind. She drags
Justin Long (who deserves no better than the character name of “Clay Dalton”)
to fortune teller and world-famous-on-that-street mystic, Rham Jas (Dileep Rao,
who would later play a mystical chemist in Chris Nolan’s Inception). Rham Jas confirms Christine’s greatest fears: Justin
Long is a dousche. Oh and she’s also been cursed to Hell. A demon is coming for
her to drag her there. Just like the title says!
Hysteria follows. Nobly following his contract,
Long continues to support her by remaining her boyfriend, doing her no favors.
The side effects of the curse include a horrible worksite nose-bleed that
should have summoned squadrons of paramedics to her side but instead leave her
coworkers staring in shock at this obvious hemorrhage like she’s a bleedy
weirdo. Then her big account gets inexplicably dealt to another bank (could Stu
be the culprit? Or one of the non-speaking-role co-workers?) so there goes her
promotion. And apparitions of Ganush attack her often enough to make her seek
out the old woman to make amends. In the course of this attempt at apology and
plea for curse-removal, Christine of course stumbles over her own feet and
destroys the now-deceased old lady’s wake, winding up under the
formaldehyde-leaking corpse, much to the horror of everyone the crazy bat’s
ever been related to.
Christine trys everything from kitten sacrifice to
exorcism complete with goat when Rham Jas finally gives her the real secret:
get rid of the goddamn button! But this is kind-hearted,
at-the-end-of-her-rope-but-still-cartoon-sweet Christine we’re talking about.
She can’t even bring herself to pass it off to people who have treated her most
like shit—not Stu, not David Paymer, not even Justin Long (though, admittedly,
the only reason he’d deserve it is for being Justin Long). So what’s the most
logical next step for poor little Christine? Why dig up Ganush’s grave and give
the button to her, of course. In the rain. In the dark. In her best clothes! If
she did get dragged to Hell, Satan would probably wince, pat her on the head
and send her topside for another chance, only to find her back in Hades a week
later. “I offended another gypsy,” she’d say with an adorable shrug.
Look at him...Justin Long-ing all over the place.
For Evil
Dead fans Drag Me to Hell was
meant to be Sam Raimi’s long-awaited return to horror. After years of suffering
beneath the yoke of Laura Ziskin and Spider-Man,
Raimi wanted to tackle some more familiar ground, preferably free of Bruce “I’m
on Burn Notice, mother-fucker!”
Campbell. And while Drag Me isn’t
quite the unrelenting gore-fest of the first Evil Dead, it shares the off-beat humor of Army of Darkness (and owes no small amount of debt to Night of the Demon). The gags are more gross-out than bloody, mostly
involving Ganush spewing some liquid or semi-solid into Christine’s open mouth.
Sam does manage to make a snotty handkerchief one of the scariest things to
ever exist, though, and that’s among the reasons we all love him.
But at no time do you feel like Christine had this
coming. In interviews, Raimi and his brother Ivan talked about wanting to do a
story about an everyday, good-hearted person who does one act of cruelty out of
selfish ambition and pays for it. Okay, if Christine had actually driven the
bulldozer into Ganush’s house screaming “Assistant Manager, bitches!”, maybe
the Brothers Raimi would have had something. But all the girl did was: her job.
It’s practically analogous to Snow White slapping the poisoned apple out of the
witch’s hand and getting squished by a dwarf-pushed boulder immediately after. Throughout
the movie she’s presented as an eager-to-please little doormat who gets more
than her share of flaming shit bags dropped on her, and for that she’s doomed
to Hell?
You can’t help but wonder if all that Marvel
Comics money went to Sam’s head, because what he basically made was a Mitt
Romney morality tale with Christine representing small business and Ganush
standing in for the filthy 47%. I mean, here’s this poor, sweet, innocent woman
in charge of the economy being bullied by a gross, grotesque, filthy and
possibly undocumented elderly woman who’s demanding more credit, even though
she hasn’t earned it. In point of fact, Ganush feels entitled to her house because she’s lived there for thirty years.
“Never missed a payment until the sickness took her eye,”—yeah, right. And what
were you doing that got you so sick, Mrs. Ganush? Probably some unhealthy
lifestyle, and now she’s no doubt on welfare, lying around and sucking off the
welfare teat! Little Miss Golden Haired bank person has her hands tied by the
system, and even if they weren’t, she was looking to advance her position
through hard work and personal responsibility. Is that so wrong? Why should she
be punished for ambition and Ganush rewarded for being a drain on the American
taxpayer? Besides, Christine said that she wanted
to help her, isn’t that enough? Apparently not for this godless, toothless
semi-foreigner who inflicts nothing but hardship on poor, poor Christine
(innocent of all wrongdoing except for the misguided love she feels for a
filthy liberal academic who collects—sorry, hoards—rare
coins).
Direct, Sam! Direct like the wind!
