GITS Script Reading and Analysis Series: “Drag Me To Hell” — Characters

Welcome to Week 10 of the GITS Script Reading & Analysis series. This week we will be analyzing the screenplay for the 2009 movie Drag Me To Hell (written by Sam Raimi and Ivan Raimi), your choice for the Horror-Comedy cross genre.

You may access the 2007–09–26 draft of the script here.

Today we discuss the script’s characters. Here is a list of most prominent ones in order of appearance in the script:

Stephanie

Ellen

Mr. Jacks

Stu

Ray

Mrs. Ganush

Rham Jas

The Kitten

Doctor Rangavertz

Trudy

George

Ilenka Ganush

Shaun San Dena

Milos

Screenplays are unique narrative forms for many reasons, one of which, I contend, is that each character in a script should have a function. Oh, sure, depending upon the genre or circumstances in a story, you may be able to drop in a secondary or tertiary character who pretty much exists for pure entertainment value, but that is not the case with primary characters. A screenplay is a blueprint to make a movie and the interplay of character functions is a critical aspect of that blueprint.

One helpful way to analyze characters is to consider them as archetypes. There are five primary character archetypes we see in movies all the time. They are:

Protagonist: The lead character, the character through whose perspective the story is told, the character who typically goes through the most significant metamorphosis.

Nemesis: Provides opposition to the Protagonist, often represents the Protagonist’s shadow, their dark impulses, tied somehow to the Protagonist’s goal.

Attractor: Characters who are most intimately tied to the Protagonist’s emotional development, often a love interest, Heart.

Mentor: Characters who are most intimately tied to the Protagonist’s intellectual development, wisdom, Head.

Trickster: Characters who test the Protagonist, switching allegiance from ally to enemy, enemy to ally, intentionally or not helping to prepare the Protagonist for their Final Struggle.

So an interesting way to approach analyzing the characters in Drag Me To Hell is: (1) Cull through the above list, picking out the most important characters. These represent the story’s primary characters. Why do you think they qualify as a primary character? What about who they are and what they do elevate their status to such importance? (2) Look through the lenses of Protagonist, Nemesis, Attractor, Mentor, and Trickster to consider what the respective narrative functions are for each primary character.

If you are uncertain as to a character’s potential archetype, ask yourself this: When all is said and done, what is the most fundamental narrative function this character provides to the story? Strip the character all the way down to that core essence. It is almost always a determining factor in understanding their archetypal role in a story.

See you in Comments to discuss the characters in Drag Me To Hell.

For Day 1 of our analysis of Drag Me To Hell, go here.

For Day 2 focusing on structure, go here. If you haven’t checked out the incredible spreadsheet Teddy Pasternak put together visualizing the structure of DMTH, you should do so here.

Remember the upcoming schedule:

Week 11 [November 14-November 18]: Panic Room [2000–02–23] — Action Thriller

NOTE: THIS SERIES AND THE USE OF SCRIPTS IS STRICTLY FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES!
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