The Carrying On of A Wayward Son

This piece originally ran in the Bryan/College Station Eagle. To read more articles, visit www.theeagle.com.

Filmmaker Sam Rami has been caught up in Spider-Man’s web since he began directing the superhero’s films in the early part of the decade.

Nine years and three web-slinging movies later, though, Rami is finally returning to the genre he cut his teeth in: horror.

Drag Me To Hell, Sam Rami’s first no-apologies, gore-filled horror comedy since 1992′s Army of Darkness, is a true return to form for the director of the Evil Dead series of movies. Despite its PG-13 rating, Drag Me To Hell is full-on, gory fun, a perfect throwback to the days when Rami was still making movies that featured a man cutting off his own hand and replacing it with a chain saw.

From dancing ghouls to projectile cat vomiting, Drag Me To Hell has everything a horror enthusiast wants in a movie — including timeliness.

In the film, Alison Lohman stars as a bank loan officer who, after denying a decrepit Gypsy woman an extension on a house loan, is cursed by the Gypsy to be cast down to hell after three days of earthly torture. Lohman’s character, a sickly sweet girl with self-esteem issues, must then find a way to break the curse, all the while being tormented by a sinister demon.

With house evictions at an all-time high, audiences will be torn on whom to root for: the film’s hero, a bank loan officer responsible for evicting an old woman from her home, or the goat-like demon who’s giving her hell.

From John Carpenter’s take on The Thing, which featured an alien killer who spread from victim to victim much like AIDS, to the post-9/11 fear of biological weapons exploited by neo-zombie movies such as 28 Days Later, horror movies have a history of taking fears that are currently plaguing the population and twisting the knife — causing audiences to face hot topics with a supernatural twist.

A good many people enjoy being scared. Just ask Stephen King as he dives, Scrooge McDuck-style, into his giant pool filled with gold coins.

The reason why artists such as King are so successful, though, has a lot to do with people’s fondness for the lesser of two evils. Horror movie-scared, after all, is always preferable to real world problem-scared.

In a world where there are literally millions of things that can kill you at any particular minute of the day, it’s a lot easier to close your eyes and tell yourself that there are no werewolves under your bed than to convince yourself that swine flu isn’t waiting for you around every corner.

By going to horror movies and watching exaggerated scares centered around real-world issues such as home eviction, sexually transmitted diseases and terrorism, it’s easier to swallow the fears that are less escapable.

There are always going to be bad things in the world to be afraid of. Being bankrupt and losing your job is a horrible thing to happen to a person, but at least one of Satan’s lackeys isn’t dragging you to hell by the tips of your toes. As they say, things could always be worse.

Robert Saucedo wants to thank Sam Rami for making him afraid of gypsies again. Follow him on twitter @robsaucedo2500.