What makes good people do bad things?

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What makes good people do bad things? This is one of today’s big questions; the newspapers regularly tell us about apparently ordinary and unremarkable people doing surprisingly wicked things. Drag Me to Hell picks up this question and runs with it, examining ‘what would happen to an ordinary person if they were cursed and put into . . . extraordinary circumstances’.[1] Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) is a loan officer, with her ambitious eye on a promotion to assistant manager. The film follows the consequences of one wrong decision she makes in an effort to win favour with her boss Mr Jacks (David Paymer). He wants to fill the position with someone who’s ‘not afraid to make the tough decisions’. In an attempt to prove her worth, Christine denies Mrs Ganush (Lorna Raver), an elderly gypsy, a third extension on her mortgage repayments. Realising that she will be thrown out of her house, Mrs Ganush drops to her knees and clings to Christine’s skirt, begging for her help. Christine steps back in shock, causing Mrs Ganush to fall to the floor in front of a crowd of onlookers. ‘You shame me,’ she says in outrage, ‘I beg you and you shame me!’ Security guards rush over to usher her out, but at the last moment Mrs Ganush turns and lunges at Christine before being pulled away from her and forced to leave. As Christine watches in stunned silence, Mr Jacks tells her, ‘You dealt with that just right.’

However, Christine’s encounter with Mrs Ganush is not over. As Christine gets into her car late that evening, Mrs Ganush rises up in the back seat and begins a vicious attack on her. After a fierce struggle, the old woman rips a button from Christine’s coat sleeve, and utters some mysterious words over it before giving it back to her. ‘Soon it will be you who begs to me,’ she whispers, and then she is gone. Christine’s boyfriend Clay Dalton (Justin Long) comes to comfort her and take her home, but on the way to the car she has a sudden urge to visit a fortune-teller they pass. This ‘seer’, Rham Jas (Dileep Rao), tells her she has been cursed and is being pursued by a demon called the Lamia. This demon torments its victims for three days, then reveals itself to be ‘a taker of souls’ and drags them to the depths of hell. The rest of the film follows Christine’s increasingly desperate attempts to rid herself of this curse.

According to Sam Raimi, the film’s director, Drag Me to Hell is, ‘a simple morality tale . . . [Christine] makes a choice to sin . . . and the movie’s about payback to her.’ It is not entirely clear what the moral of this tale is supposed to be, but it is plain that all the events follow from Christine’s greed and ambition. Initially, she is presented as good-natured, friendly and compassionate. Yet her desire for a promotion makes her deny Mrs Ganush’s request, bringing the old woman’s rage on herself. At first, Christine is merely unnerved, but as the effects of the curse worsen her moral compass begins to waver.

When Rham Jas suggests an animal sacrifice to appease the demon, she is horrified and protests: ‘No way, I’m a vegetarian! I volunteer at the Puppy Shelter! I don’t just go around killing animals.’ His reply is ominous: ‘You’ll be surprised what you’ll be willing to do when the Lamia comes for you.’ The next scene soon reveals the truth in this warning. After another bout of torment from the demon, Christine takes a large kitchen knife and sacrifices her pet cat to the demon. This is just one step in the breakdown of Christine’s morality as she is put under increasing pressure, knowing that time is short before the demon comes to claim her. As Sam Raimi puts it ‘She continues to make . . . darker and darker choices, so that she can survive this terrible ordeal she’s going through.’ We see her morality crumbling as her terrible fate draws closer; she begins to care more about herself and her own life than about anything else.

It soon becomes obvious that the sacrifice was not enough, and the Lamia makes another terrifying appearance. As her time runs out, Rham Jas gives her one more way to free herself: she can give the curse away. She must give away the ‘accursed object’ – the button Mrs Ganush took from her. Whoever owns the button will fall victim to the curse: ‘make a gift of it, and you’ve given the curse away.’ This leaves Christine with a serious dilemma: should she give in and let the Lamia take her, or should she unload this terrible fate onto someone else? Rham Jas makes sure she is aware of the consequences, and warns her to choose her victim carefully. Christine comes dangerously close to giving into her desire for self-preservation; she sits in a café trying to decide who to offload the curse onto. She tells the waitress pestering her for tips to leave her alone or ‘I’ll give you a tip you won’t forget!’ She considers giving the curse to a terminally ill man, but relents when she sees he has a wife. She also attempts to give the button to a co-worker whose interference is preventing her promotion. However, she cannot bring herself to do it. She pities him and sends him away. She despairs and asks aloud, ‘Who deserves this?’ This is a question that lies at the heart of the film: does Christine’s punishment fit her crime?

Sam Raimi wants us to see Christine as ‘a really good girl’. We see this in Clay’s words to her: ‘You have such a good heart.’ The implication is that she is a good person, driven by desperation to do progressively more wicked deeds. Is this really the case? In the Bible we can see what Jesus’s answer to this question is. He taught that evil thoughts and deeds come ‘from within, out of a person’s heart’ (Mark 7:21).  Pressure doesn’t make ‘good’ people do bad things; it just brings to the surface what was there all along. When we consider Christine’s actions, we can clearly see the truth of this. The decision which set everything in motion was the denial of Mrs Ganush’s request. No one forced Christine to do this; it was entirely her responsibility. Later, Christine’s fear for her life leads her to do things she would never have thought she was capable of before, but no one is forcing her to do them. Every step of the way she makes willing choices. Christine behaves exactly as we’d expect if what Jesus said about the human heart is true.

However, there are obviously big differences between what Jesus teaches and Christine’s situation. In the film, she must answer to the Lamia and try to appease it. In reality it is not an evil demon we answer to, but the God of the universe whose judgement is perfect: ‘He will judge the world with justice, and the nations with his truth’ (Psalm 96:13). The problem for us is that, because we reject God in our hearts, nothing we do is really ‘good’. So then we all come under a curse, not from the Lamia, but ‘the curse pronounced by the law’ (Galatians 3:13). This means the failure of all humans to live up to the perfect standard of God. The consequence of this curse is death. Everyone on earth falls under this judgement because no one is perfect.

Christine had the chance to give her curse away, but it was a terrible choice: it meant that whoever she gave it to would suffer the consequences. They would be dragged to hell. That person would be punished for what Christine had done wrong. Jesus told us that we can also give our curse away. But again, whoever took it would have to suffer the punishment we deserve. Fortunately, we don’t have to face the moral dilemma of choosing someone we think deserves the curse. The Bible tells us that the only person to ever live who didn’t deserve the curse took it freely. Jesus chose to take it from us: ‘When he was hung on the cross, he took upon himself the curse for our wrongdoing’ (Galatians 3:13). He is the only one who upheld the perfect standards of God, and so he was the only one able to take our curse and the consequences, and yet not be defeated. Instead, he rose again to life, and because of him ‘death is swallowed up in victory’ (1 Corinthians 15:54). One member of the film’s cast commented that, ‘every attempt [Christine] makes to get rid of the curse just gets her in deeper.’ The same is true of us; no matter what we do, we can never save ourselves, only Jesus can free us from our curse.

So, what makes good people do bad things? Jesus says that’s not the question we should be asking. Instead we should realise that every one of us is capable of the things Christine does in Drag Me to Hell, and worse. The question then is, ‘How can a good God accept us?’ The answer is because of what Jesus did for us. Christine couldn’t save herself, but all she needed to do was turn to Jesus. What will you do?

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