Talk about a wake-up call! Alison Lohman in Drag Me to Hell

Bolts from the Blue

Inspiration strikes and horror finds a home

"A lightning bolt seems more divine than an ordinary death,” muses the compellingly articulate American novelist Paul Auster. “It changed my whole way of looking at the world.” Auster, who barely survived a lightning strike at age 14, is one of several similar close encounters featured in Act of God, the newest documentary by Jennifer Baichwal (Manufactured Landscapes).

The primal force of lightning—which is an excessive amount of negative energy discharged in pursuit of equilibrium—is profoundly physical yet it often inspires a metaphysical reaction in people who experience its overwhelming, deadly and seemingly capricious power. Although Auster believes in a random universe where a lightning bolt is nothing more than mere chance, a New Age healer from Las Vegas begs to differ. An ex-marine and all-around tough guy, he was hit by a lightning blast that technically killed him for 28 minutes and consigned him to two years of pain and rehab. That zap also opened him up to a seemingly magical realm of spirituality that was utterly transformative. At first you figure him for a scammer, but when you see the program he created to provide end-of-life care to dying veterans his sincerity is impressive. Then a more traditional religious response comes out of Mexico, where a grieving woman discusses how “God’s will”—or maybe just a massive spirit of irony—caused her young daughter to become one of several victims when lightning struck a Catholic religious ceremony atop a hill near her town.

Another thread running through Act features avant garde guitarist Fred Frith, who we see participating in a neural experiment where scientists map minute electrical impulses in his brain as he improvises on his guitar. From the macro world of lightning bolts to the tiniest spurts emitting from those talented Frith neurons, Baichwal asks us to contemplate notions of randomness mediated by a universe flowing with electrical energy.

This is fascinating subject matter, but it doesn’t resolve into anything truly compelling. With considerable screen time devoted to a “lightning museum” in France and a Santeria ritual in Cuba that perceives lightning as the angry fulminations of a god named Shango, the well-filmed Act ultimately has more breadth than depth.

★ ★ ★ ½

An act of happenstance proves to be utterly devilish in Drag Me to Hell, the latest—and impressively witty—splatterfest from horror-meister Sam Raimi. Although best known for directing the upscale Spider-Man movies, Raimi’s roots are in the horror genre, and the auteur of the pulpy and pustular Evil Dead series has a great deal of ghastly fun reinvigorating the classic trope of the gypsy curse. In this iteration, a bank’s sweet but ambitious loans officer named Christine (Alison Lohman, Flicka) overrides her better instincts and refuses to grant yet another extension to an old woman with slimy dentures and a dead eye whose mortgage is in default. Faced with losing her house, the old hag curses Christine to the max: as we soon find out, Christine is due for three days of gruesome haunting and other torments before she will get hauled down to Satan’s rec room as guest of honour at her very own barbecue.

With supportive boyfriend (Justin Long) in tow, our wide-eyed heroine gets some grounding in curses via a fortuneteller and prepares to fight for her life. The ensuing struggle—which ranges from sneak attacks to full-frontal assaults and features everything from auditory hallucinations to popping eyeballs, vomit geysers and other colourful bodily fluids that even the Farrelly Brothers haven’t dared to use—is at least as funny as it is scary . . . and Hell is certainly scary, even as it revels in its own schlockiness. So, whether you are screaming or screaming with laughter, this Cannes-crowned shocker will delight anyone with extreme tastes. Although not as perfect as Shawn of the Dead, this is as well-crafted a piece of B-movie beastliness as anyone should wish for.

★ ★ ★ ½

(Act of God plays at Cinecenta from June 7-13; Drag Me to Hell continues at the Odeon and SilverCity)