At it's core is a simple yet terrifying story of a young woman who has been cursed to be dragged into hell and eternal damnation in three days time. It's a horror film about someone losing their soul and suffering for eternity. That's about as bad as it gets. There's this ever present all consuming "Oh my fucking god I am seriously fucked in the worst way" feeling throughout. This is the kind of fear and terror that clings to every scene, marinates in every tense moment and to me outweighs the classic slasher film where there are a series of non-sensical killings. This isn't about fear of death. It's fear of eternal damnation which is just a tad bit worse.
The greatness begins even before the story starts with a classic credit sequence of both gothic artistic impressions of hell and a great gothic score which gets you in the mood from the very beginning.
From start to finish instead of overly complex twists and turns and multiple plot points we get a very simple story told perfectly. The concentration is solely on this woman's journey into the hell realm and eventually into hell itself. Through incredible sound effects, visual effects that support the story but don't get showy, and incredible pacing that takes it's time we get every last ounce of of this story. We feel every bit of the effect of this demon that is haunting her and driving her mad, as we see her whipped around in her room, thrown against the wall, tormented by loud creaking noises, shadowy hands reaching to grab her. It's raw, horrifying stuff.
What makes this movie so dramatic is that we have an almost angelic female character in her mid twenties who's instincts tell her to do good. She's an innocent girl from the country trying to become a success. She wants a promotion at the bank that she works at and she wants to hold on to her professor boyfriend who's mother thinks she's not good enough for him. In order to be accepted and successful she feels like she has to go against her more humanistic instincts and it costs her dearly. It's actually a great fable about morality, the giving into what she knows is a wrong decision in order to attain success is allegorical to selling one's soul, and in the end she literally loses her soul and suffers eternal damnation.
The thing that creates so many of this film's great moments is the fact that this woman needs so badly to be accepted and because of the decision that she makes towards this goal she is cursed by an old gypsy woman, is driven mad, and looks like a crazy woman at her boyfriend's parents house, at work, at home, and symbolically changes her opinion of her kitty in one of the film's more twisted moments. Speaking of this old gypsy woman. Holy shit what a fucking bad-ass crazy bitch. She gets this movie rolling right along, especially with the classic fight scene in the parking lot involving biting, clawing, and just your basic cornucopia of the macabre. She is seemingly unstoppable, terrifying, and absolutely disgusting. She is classic Sam Raimi with his twisted sense of humor entwined with classic horror.
The scene that stands out for me in this movie is the seance scene which totally rules. When the goat is inhabited by the demon, starts to talk, and takes a chomp out of the man's arm this movie arrives at worshipsville.
Every great horror movie nails its landing and this is no exception. It looks like she's finally in the clear, she did everything that she had to do, and it turns out that the envelope that she gave to the old gypsy woman had her boyfriend's coin and not the cursed button. The sun's out and it's a beautiful day, which makes it suck that much more because she realizes that she is so fucked in the worst way and can do absolutely nothing about it. It's too late and It's about the worst feeling a person can have. It's perfect that she falls in front of a train because getting hit by a train would actually be a happy ending compared to what happens right before the train reaches her. The earth crumbles beneath her and she is literally dragged into hell, and the last image we see is her face melting as she is dragged into eternal damnation. Harsh.
A friend summed this movie up perfectly. "Every time I screamed I immediately laughed right afterwards." It's joyfully terrifying.
