Drag Me to Hell/Headscratchers

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Christine spurts half a pint of blood from her nose at work, and everyone acts like she's being rude rather than calling 911 and getting her an ambulance. Her boss is only concerned with having gotten some of her blood in his mouth. Clearly, Christine has suffered a serious injury (like a brain tumor that just burst) and her life is in danger. Even if everyone at work is unfeeling and totally professional they should still care. If she dies, then the bank could most likely be sued by Christine's relatives.
    • There are theories that most of the horror of the movie is all in Christine's head, and that scene is part of the evidence.
  • So wait, if the person holding the button is the one that gets dragged down to hell, then why wasn't it Clay that got dragged down instead of Christine?
    • Up until the very end, that's exactly what I thought was gonna happen.
    • It's not the person holding the button that gets dragged to Hell, it's the button's owner. Hence the reason she had to give it to someone else as a gift, rather than just flushing it down the toilet.
  • Why doesn't Rham Jas just give Christine all three of her options at once? She would have had a lot more time to choose a course of action that way.
    • He did initially thought the first choice would worked and the last one was a Sadistic Choice.
  • This is really just a personal gripe but what justifies an elderly woman one week from death with more than one optional place to live who's been living off unpaid debts with substantial loans and extensions thinking an honest-to-god worker just doing her job deserves going to Hell?
    • And just what gives her the power to damn possibly sinless (or at least a heavy lack of) souls to Hell just for pissing her off that a certain higher power couldn't overrule?
      • Also, if Gypsies have the power to damn people to hell...why is it being applied now, instead of, say, when certain people were slaughtering them by the thousands?
    • You're missing the point. We're not supposed to think Christine deserves to go to hell. We're supposed to be scared for her. Mrs. Ganush is at worst a villain and at best someone taking Disproportionate Retribution out on someone without actually contemplating the gravity of it. She's hardly a sympathetic character once the plot really gets rolling.
    • Exactly. The Fridge Brilliance is that Christine didn't deserve to go to hell, yet still suffered. If it happened to her, it could happen to anyone, not just bad people. Paranoia Fuel much?
    • I would buy the explanation that she didn't deserve to go to hell, except that in the end, right before she goes to hell, she confesses to her boyfiend that it was her who denied the loan extension and not her boss, like it was an admission of guilt.
  • Assuming that this is not a Devil but No God universe, HOW THE HECK would God allow a little boy and a woman like Christine to get dragged to hell? Is God powerless against gypsy curses? It could be argued that God cannot interfere with free will, but for something this serious, one would think that He/She/It would interfere. It's like telling two kids not to hurt each other, only to do nothing while one of them tries to kill the other with a flamethrower. It's one thing for a human to kill another, but it's something entirely different to intentionally curse another human being to hell.
    • Horror movies aren't really supposed to make sense as long as they get jump scares out of you. Other than that, it's probably a Devil but No God situation like you said.
  • Minor nitpick, but the Wikipedia article mentions that the train is "barrelling towards [Christine]". So a train is charging through a major terminal station (Los Angeles Union) at, most likely, a very unsafe speed. Surely the engineer would know the speed limits? If, over in England, a train ran at high speed through a major station like Exeter St Davids or Southampton Central, both of which have tight speed limits and are required stops for all passenger trains, there would be major repercussions.
    • In my city when a train isn't making a stop (they call them express trains here) it barrels through the station very quickly.
    • Aren't all passenger trains supposed to stop at Los Angeles Union though?
    • I wouldn't know, i should have specified earlier that i am from New York City.
    • As a major train station, all passenger routes going that way stop at LAUS. Given she was heading to Santa Barbara, the train would not have been travelling at that speed in real life, and indeed, would have been entering Union Station backwards, so the locomotive appearing first would not be accurate either.
    • It's a Plot Hole. Los Angeles Union has no through tracks, a train at that speed is about to have a very unpleasant accident.
  • So, Mrs. Ganush has no money to make payments on her loan, and goes to the bank to get an extension. Christine doesn't give it to her, thus gets cursed for her selfish (from Mrs. Ganush's view) ways. But, when Ganush is dead, her house is filled with extended Roma stereotypes/family who are merrily feasting and cavorting. Could they not scrape together to make a payment on her house after two extensions? Why is it that their failure to help Ganush is overlooked but Christine's gets her dragged to Hell?
    • They're not white.
  • I read somewhere that this movie apparently has some kind of anorexia subtext. Um... can someone explain that, please? Cause I'm not seeing it beyond the mention that Christine used to be fat (Then again, I only saw the movie a while ago...)
    • Well, from what I recall, the anorexia theory was based around the fact that most all of the gross things that happen to Christine involve her getting something in her mouth/being force-fed (the dream!Ganush pukes worms in her mouth, the shed!Ganush's eye flying into her mouth, corpse!Ganush spits corpse juice into her mouth, etc) and the fact that the only times we see her eat either turn the food into something disgusting (at the dinner) or treat it as an act of defeat (the ice cream binge and the sundaes at the diner). There's also a small moment when she passes a pastry shop near the beginning and has to stop herself from going in.
  • What pisses me off about this movie is the when that young woman said Christine deserves whatever comes to her. Does she know about the curse? If so, what kind of bullshit is that to damn someone to hell when not was Ganush pushing her chances but was the one who set herself up for shame in the first place?