To be clear, I do not believe in hell nor any god who would create an eternal pain engine for his own vanity. I think Raimi captured that idea really well. This is a long way to say, hell as a concept isn’t fair, any crime is small in the face of eternal punishment. Who can remember their life while shrieking in pain for even a moment, let alone after the first few million years? Their human life basically, mathematically doesn’t even register as a percentage of their existence. And when we get there we will turn back around and do it all backwards in an eternal loop. They will suffer through each bloody airless second as the mountains crumble and the stars go black, to the end of time. And that an infinite number of tortured lifetimes awaits them. Think of that moment when they will have lived through more mind-breaking, flesh-shivering torture than they ever lived on earth. Then realize that however long it would take for you to find their suffering distasteful is barely the first step in their experience. Someone who really deserves it, you know? How many days of their suffering would you inflict? Or months, years…centuries? How long before you get bored or tired of it, before you realize this isn’t doing anything, the past is still the awful past and their agonized screams are the only product of this wretched work. Think of the worst person you can, someone you wouldn’t mind or would even enjoy torturing. And all of these are fine and make sense for a subculture to exist, but they're surprisingly pervasive in the genre as a whole, to the point that OP is shocked that they witnessed an actual nihilistic bad ending in a horror movie of all things. Somehow it's built a culture around schlocky tropes most commonly found in slashers that have become genre traditions, like TnA, inventive killing of characters that the audience feels no empathy towards, and final girls. The supernatural antagonists are often forces of nature that are amoral and sometimes even not sapient, and they torment characters that are simply unfortunate. In Asia most horror is primal, uncaring, and brutal. I've always thought that Horror as a genre is so untapped in the west. Which I feel like should be par for the course, no? I think Drag Me to Hell is one of the best horror movies of all time because it swings for the fences with Sam Raimi's style and irreverence and even while being fun, its horror elements manage to stick with the viewer even without an R rating. Is the movie trying to say she deserved all this? Why did she deserve harsher punishment than say her coworker who cheated and lied? Admittedly, part of this is likely because they cast an actress that is extremely cute and innocent looking, but I think in the end this comes down to the fact this is extremely disproportionate retribution. I've seen plenty of horror films where horrible things happen to the main character like Smile where the main character immolates herself or The Mist where our lead kills his family minutes before help arrives but none shook me to my core as this. The ending where the girl is eventually sucked down to the bowels of hell just left me with a pit in my stomach. The character simply does not really deserve all this and it is just depressing to watch. The plot is driven by a woman that is cursed to constant horrible things happening to her and eventual eternal damnation, all for not extending a ladies loan for a third time. Instead I got one of the most depressing viewing experiences of all time. I was fully aware of Raimi's style and was expecting a fun horror comedy.
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