Textual Analysis - Drag Me To Hell

Textual Analysis

For my textual analysis I will be analysing the film ‘Drag Me to Hell’ written by Sam Raimi, Ivan Raimi and Directed by Sam Raimi. The film was first released on the 15^th of March 2009 in the Southwest Film Festival; it was also shown in the EKEK Sika säkissä, Cannes and Toronto film festivals later that year. The movie belongs to the horror genre with a sub-genre of supernatural due to the narrative and genre conventions in the film.

Part One: Narrative structure

The narrative structure of the film follows the equilibrium model made by Tzvetan Todorov a Franco-Bulgarian philosopher. He suggests that all narratives follow a three part structure. They begin with equilibrium, where everything is balanced, progress as something comes along to disrupt that equilibrium, and finally reach a resolution, when equilibrium is restored. This structure can be seen throughout the narrative also. The equilibrium is shown at the beginning through the man character seemingly normal and innocent at work, the disruption occurs when the gypsy women curses her life and damns her to hell in 3 days, then the new equilibrium shows once the main characters get dragged to hell leaving her boyfriend bewildered at the train station alone. Also the binary opposition theory by Claude Levi-Strauss of to understand the good we must see the bad. The good in the movie is shown through the main character and the bad is shown in the demon and gypsy character by bringing destruction and mayhem. The movie was in chronological order and had a very clear movie story line. The narrative of the film was closed because of the clear ending of the main character being taken to hell does not leaving the audience in suspense.  The audience has a clear understanding of what is happening in the narrative of the story which makes the narrative omniscient instead of restricted such as in the 2003 supernatural horror film ‘Gothika’ where the audience where held in suspense about the  narrative of the movie until the end of the movie.

Part Two: Genre codes and conventions and representations

Main character of the film was a young lady named Christine Brown played by Alison Loham and an old gypsy woman Sylvia Ganush named played by Lorna Raver. Christine Browns character was very typical of the movie genre of a supernatural horror film.  Most supernatural horror films have a leading lady  who is usually blonde, very conservative and usually survive till the end of the movie, for example in the 1978 movie Halloween, Jamie Lee Curtis become the idol horror movie  scream queen due to her characters persona and this was copied and become a horror movie convention over the years.  Christine’s character spoke in a very soft tone, therefore when she had to raise her voice and use more profound language it’s contrasted the character more to emphasise that that type of dialogue was not usually used by the character. Her facial expressions and body language where always tense throughout the movie to exaggerate that she was scared about her fate in 3 days. Her costume and make up was very basic and the colours she wore were very dull throughout the movie except for at the end of the movie when she thought that her troubles were over and all is well her costumes become or colourful and joyful to reflect her mood. This is all typical of the movie genre to make the atmosphere for the film more gloomy and dull therefore bringing the audience mood down so they are in a more solemn state of mind and more easily scared.

The old gypsy woman character was an exaggerated and stereotypical representation of ethnicity. Her character had a very strong eastern European accent and spoke with very basic broken down English using dialogue such as ‘ I beg and you shame me’   this is an exaggeration of a representation of the eastern European traveller ethnicity because of the overemphasis on her accent and dialog ue during the film.  Also her costume and make-up was very stereotypical of an old Eastern European woman shown through her costume and make up.  

She is seemed wearing a scarf over her head and very baggy clothes which are commonly associated with the eastern European traveller community wear.  Her face is very pale and she has one eye missing to inflict and women to the viewer to make them think she is more of a villain.

The story line of the film is typical of the movie genre of a supernatural horror film. The film had supernatural elements such as ghosts, spirits and séances during the movie which is very commonly associated with the supernatural aspect of life. Also the main storyline of the movie is that Christine Brown was cursed and that a demon will torture her for 3 days before going to hell, which is the main element of the supernatural movie genre of demons, the afterlife, possession which happens in various over supernatural horror films such as the 2000 movie series final destination where the spirit of death follows the characters to kill them.

The sound used throughout the movie was both diegetic and non diegetic sounds. For example for on-screen diegetic there was plenty dialogue used throughout the movie from all the characters in the movie even some in foreign languages. Also for off-screen diegetic the sound of the wind, and footsteps from another location towards the character in the shot.  Non diegetic sounds was background music matching the atmosphere of the scene, for example when the character had a more high energy scene fighting with the spirit the music became more tense and dramatic as she battled. The shots ranged from medium shots or characters talking to extreme close ups small important items to the narrative such as the button. The shot movements also varied for example an arc movement was used during the séance scene and tilted angle was used when the protagonist was in the grave to emphasise her frantic behaviour at the moment. The editing usually used straight cuts from shot to shot but from changing scenes they used fades and graphic matches for example they used one with the decoration on the wall to the trees outside. A jump cut was also used from a medium shot to extreme shot to close up of the characters face to emphasise their facial expression.