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

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 structure. You may choose to consider the story in terms of three-act structure with one of these iterations:

Aristotle: Beginning / Middle / End

Campbell [Hero’s Journey]: Separation / Initiation / Return

Hegel: Thesis / Antithesis / Synthesis

Jung: Invitation / Immersion / Integration

If anyone is into sequence theory, if you’d care to break down the script per its sequences, we would all laud and honor you.

Or make your case that the script has some other narrative structure… or perhaps none at all.

See you in comments!

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

Here is an interview with co-writer/director Sam Raimi about the movie:

Remember the upcoming schedule:

Week 11 [November 14-November 18]: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind [2003] — Charlie Kaufman

Week 12 [November 28-December 2]: Panic Room [2000–02–23] — Action Thriller

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

UPDATE: Teddy P came up with an amazing spreadsheet breakdown of DMTH’s structure which you can access here. It’s definitely worth a look, an interesting way to create a visual representation of plot and character involvement in that plot.

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