Drag Me to Hell opening

     We start our scene looking at a respectable posh looking house with two nice cars on the driveway; we are told that we are in California in 1969. Then a truck pulls into shot up the driveway, but this truck has old pieces of wood in it and is covered in dust and mud. It doesn't fit in this scene, it a bit of an eye sour showing that the people driving it are from a low family. The next shot is reversed showing the back of the truck where we see a woman sitting holding a blanket wrapped around something. A small detail that is obviously deliberate is the number plate is different to the other cars showing that the family has traveled across states just to get to this house; this shows that they must be at a place that should be able to help with whatever is wrong, as they wouldn't have traveled so far.

     The mother runs to the door and calls for someone to come and help, when the woman of the house appears at the door she asks what is wrong in a foreign language, instantly alienating us from the actors and instead of feeling sorry for the people we look to see what is going to happen; this is the verfremdungseffekt. We are introduced to the boy in the blanket who has apparently been hearing voices and that he knows that something is coming to get him, these are classic examples of horror in films, all we need now is for him to start seeing scary shadows that no one else can see. We soon find out that the cause for all this paranoia is that he stole a silver necklace, from a gypsy stall, and the owner would not accept it back.

     This boy has managed to annoy a group of gypsies who have then put a curse on him, all in a film called “Drag me to Hell”. I hope he will be alright.

     When the silver necklace is presented, from a pocket next to his heart, a fly also appears and fly’s around the lady’s head, this is an association to death as flies tend to congregate around a nice rotting corpse, this hints at the boys near end.

     We then follow the woman into the house. We jump forwards a few minutes and we see the boy’s sweaty face looking up at a stained glass window, what is that on the glass? A shadow?  Hang on scary title, hidden voices, someone coming to get him and now scary shadow. We have got the lot, this is now official a horror film!

     The music turns scratchy and very high pitched we see that there are a dozen clawed hands closing in and blocking out the light. This is another hint that this boys light is about to be blotted out as well.

Something else that I expected from a film with gypsies is revers spells. But as we see the owner of the house starting the ritual with herbs and a candle she is interrupted by the door behind her bursting open as if pushed but there is nothing there. The woman is simultaneously toppled over onto the floor and the boy screams with is pupils filling his eyes. The room fills with wind; papers whirl around floor and we watch the parents of the child get beaten up by this invisible monster. These few special effects give a really good impact on the audience as we are swept up in what is happening and completely drawn in. These effects while are rather simple they are hard to make look good so I won’t be attempting to use these in my film.