Editorials
Did Christine Brown Deserve Her Fate in ‘Drag Me to Hell?’
Drag Me to Hell is a masterpiece. That is not a popular opinion among some of you, but the fact is that it’s a brilliant horror comedy that culminates in one of the most brutal endings in horror movie history.
***SPOILERS FOR A SEVEN-YEAR-OLD FILM BELOW***
As many of you already know, poor Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) does get dragged to Hell in the final scene of Drag Me to Hell. There are quite a few people who, shockingly, are alright with this and feel that Ms. Brown deserved her fate to burn in Hell for all eternity.
How could anyone think that poor, poor Christine Brown deserved to get dragged to Hell only to be tortured by the Lamia? The goat demon gives you a pretty clear idea of what would happen to her: it would feast upon her soul while she festered in the grave. Does anyone deserve that treatment?
Without calling any of you out, here is a small sampling of reader comments from posts I have made on this site about Drag Me to Hell:
- “I couldn’t even root for the lead girl. She was so unlikable and then when she killed the kitten it just sealed my disdain for her.”
- “It’s really the old woman that’s the victim in this story and Alison Lohman, I think her character Christine deserved probably what she got.”
- “The audience kind of overlooks and makes excuses for the selfish choices her character makes throughout the film and therefore ends up shocked and surprised by what happens to her in the end.”
- “She was a self-centered person who gave the appearance that she was a nice innocent lady who was willing to make Ganush suffer in Hell after all that she did to the old lady while she was alive. The bank teller dug her own Hell.”
- “Drag Me to Hell had a happy ending. That Alison’s character was such a douchebag that I was happy she was pulled down to Hell. I hope she was suffering every day down there. So yes, happy ending indeed!”
- “She basically tried to blame her boss every time the demon encountered her and it was so annoying. She just wasn’t as good a person as she thought she was.”
Look, we all have our own opinions and we are certainly entitled to them, but how could anyone think that Christine deserved to spend her afterlife being tortured in Hell? You may need to watch that final scene again to refresh your memory:
To be clear: no one (save for Hitler and maybe a couple of other historical figures on that level of evil) deserves this fate. Let’s assume for a moment that Christine was a Grade-A megabitch. Even then, she wouldn’t really deserve a fate like this. It would be easier to accept and laugh at, but even Heather Chandler herself didn’t deserve to down a mug full of drain cleaner. And she was the worst.
If one were to (literally) play Devil’s advocate, then one would need to look at the aforementioned charges brought up against Ms. Brown:
- She shouldn’t have rejected Mrs. Ganush’s request for a third extension on her mortgage.
- She was selfish for wanting to live and she was self-centered in that she only cared about her own survival.
- She killed her kitten.
It’s that last one that really gets many of you going, so I’ll save it for last. First: was it wrong of Christine to deny Mrs. Ganush her request for a third extension on her mortgage? Sure. It was morally wrong and a bit mean-spirited. Mrs. Ganush had exhausted her income when “the sickness took [her] eye.” That being said, have none of you ever been stuck between a rock and a hard place in order to advance in work? If you’ve been in the same position for a significant period of time with no advancement in your place of employment, it can be a bit frustrating. Christine was even cornered into this decision by her boss (the always great David Paymer), who basically told her she wouldn’t get the promotion if she didn’t shut Ganush down. It’s a shitty thing to do, but does she deserve to burn in Hell for this decision? Not at all. It’s not like she slapped the hag and kicked her out the door for everyone to laugh at her. She made a bold career move and that’s it.
Second: is Christine selfish for wanting to live and for caring solely about her own survival? Many times in Drag Me to Hell, Christine tries to throw other people to the Lamia. From her insistence at the séance that her boss put her in this position to her legitimately trying to send Mrs. Ganush to Hell (after failing to do the same to her obnoxious co-worker Stu), Christine certainly makes a case against herself. Still, would none of you do the same thing? If it were coming down to the wire and you were faced with being dragged to Hell or sending anyone else there in your place, wouldn’t you pick anyone else? Maybe you are more selfless than I am, but in the heat of the moment you are capable of making any kind of decision. As mentioned before, no one deserves this fate, but Christine (again) is being forced into a decision. Mrs. Ganush didn’t have to curse Christine. She made the choice out of spite, and if anything that makes her worse (and arguably more deserving of this fate) than Christine.
Lastly, does Christine deserve to burn in Hell for all eternity for killing her cat? Look, I get it! Killing a pet is basically the worst thing you could ever do in a movie (or real life). I’ve got a 2-year-old dog that, I kid you not, I would take a bullet for, but are you really telling me that you wouldn’t sacrifice any animal in order to save yourself from eternal damnation? Christine may have acted a little too quickly (she could have gone to her family farm and slaughtered a pig, for instance), but she wasn’t thinking clearly. After all, at this point in the film she had just been air-molested by the Lamia and was feeling pretty desperate. I’m not excusing the cat-killing, I’m just saying that it doesn’t condemn her to Hell.
This may be a controversial statement, but those who believe that Christine deserves her fate only think that they feel that way. Those select few are rationalizing their feelings over losing a character who had not committed any sort of grave sin. What do you do when an innocent character is dealt the cruelest punishment in cinema history? You convince yourself that she somehow deserved it. “She killed a helpless kitten!,” you cry. “She was being mean to that vindictive gypsy who was granted two extensions on her mortgage and probably deserved to be thrown out of her house!,” you say. I call shenanigans! There is no way any of you really, truly believe that Christine had this coming to her.
Let’s open the floor for discussion. Are you one of the select view that thinks Christine Brown was a selfish, horrible character who had it coming? Or are you on the opposing side of the argument and actually empathize with Ms. Brown? Let me know in the comments below or Tweet me if you really want to get into it!
Having grown up in a religious family, Christian movie night was something that happened a lot more often than I care to admit. However, back when I was a teenager, my parents showed up one night with an unusually cool-looking DVD of a movie that had been recommended to them by a church leader. Curious to see what new kind of evangelical propaganda my parents had rented this time, I proceeded to watch the film with them expecting a heavy-handed snoozefest.
To my surprise, I was a few minutes in when Denzel Washington proceeded to dismember a band of cannibal raiders when I realized that this was in fact a real movie. My mom was horrified by the flick’s extreme violence and dark subject matter, but I instantly became a fan of the Hughes Brothers’ faith-based 2010 thriller, The Book of Eli. And with the film’s atomic apocalypse having apparently taken place in 2024, I think this is the perfect time to dive into why this grim parable might also be entertaining for horror fans.
Originally penned by gaming journalist and The Walking Dead: The Game co-writer Gary Whitta, the spec script for The Book of Eli was already making waves back in 2007 when it appeared on the coveted Blacklist. It wasn’t long before Columbia and Warner Bros. snatched up the rights to the project, hiring From Hell directors Albert and Allen Hughes while also garnering attention from industry heavyweights like Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman.
After a series of revisions by Anthony Peckham meant to make the story more consumer-friendly, the picture was finally released in January of 2010, with the finished film following Denzel as a mysterious wanderer making his way across a post-apocalyptic America while protecting a sacred book. Along the way, he encounters a run-down settlement controlled by Bill Carnegie (Gary Oldman), a man desperate to get his hands on Eli’s book so he can motivate his underlings to expand his empire. Unwilling to let this power fall into the wrong hands, Eli embarks on a dangerous journey that will test the limits of his faith.
SO WHY IS IT WORTH WATCHING?
Judging by the film’s box-office success, mainstream audiences appear to have enjoyed the Hughes’ bleak vision of a future where everything went wrong, but critics were left divided by the flick’s trope-heavy narrative and unapologetic religious elements. And while I’ll be the first to admit that The Book of Eli isn’t particularly subtle or original, I appreciate the film’s earnest execution of familiar ideas.
For starters, I’d like to address the religious elephant in the room, as I understand the hesitation that some folks (myself included) might have about watching something that sounds like Christian propaganda. Faith does indeed play a huge part in the narrative here, but I’d argue that the film is more about the power of stories than a specific religion. The entire point of Oldman’s character is that he needs a unifying narrative that he can take advantage of in order to manipulate others, while Eli ultimately chooses to deliver his gift to a community of scholars. In fact, the movie even makes a point of placing the Bible in between equally culturally important books like the Torah and Quran, which I think is pretty poignant for a flick inspired by exploitation cinema.
Sure, the film has its fair share of logical inconsistencies (ranging from the extent of Eli’s Daredevil superpowers to his impossibly small Braille Bible), but I think the film more than makes up for these nitpicks with a genuine passion for classic post-apocalyptic cinema. Several critics accused the film of being a knockoff of superior productions, but I’d argue that both Whitta and the Hughes knowingly crafted a loving pastiche of genre influences like Mad Max and A Boy and His Dog.
Lastly, it’s no surprise that the cast here absolutely kicks ass. Denzel plays the title role of a stoic badass perfectly (going so far as to train with Bruce Lee’s protégée in order to perform his own stunts) while Oldman effortlessly assumes a surprisingly subdued yet incredibly intimidating persona. Even Mila Kunis is remarkably charming here, though I wish the script had taken the time to develop these secondary characters a little further. And hey, did I mention that Tom Waits is in this?
AND WHAT MAKES IT HORROR ADJACENT?
Denzel’s very first interaction with another human being in this movie results in a gory fight scene culminating in a face-off against a masked brute wielding a chainsaw (which he presumably uses to butcher travelers before eating them), so I think it’s safe to say that this dog-eat-dog vision of America will likely appeal to horror fans.
From diseased cannibals to hyper-violent motorcycle gangs roaming the wasteland, there’s plenty of disturbing R-rated material here – which is even more impressive when you remember that this story revolves around the bible. And while there are a few too many references to sexual assault for my taste, even if it does make sense in-universe, the flick does a great job of immersing you in this post-nuclear nightmare.
The excessively depressing color palette and obvious green screen effects may take some viewers out of the experience, but the beat-up and lived-in sets and costume design do their best to bring this dead world to life – which might just be the scariest part of the experience.
Ultimately, I believe your enjoyment of The Book of Eli will largely depend on how willing you are to overlook some ham-fisted biblical references in order to enjoy some brutal post-apocalyptic shenanigans. And while I can’t really blame folks who’d rather not deal with that, I think it would be a shame to miss out on a genuinely engaging thrill-ride because of one minor detail.
With that in mind, I’m incredibly curious to see what Whitta and the Hughes Brothers have planned for the upcoming prequel series starring John Boyega…
There’s no understating the importance of a balanced media diet, and since bloody and disgusting entertainment isn’t exclusive to the horror genre, we’ve come up with Horror Adjacent – a recurring column where we recommend non-horror movies that horror fans might enjoy.
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