Every culture around the world has its own interpretation of Hell. All of the definitions agree that if one wants to avoid the flaming pit, one must live their life without committing sins. For a long time, horror films have explored many conceptions of hell, and many of their narratives revolve around it. Some of them tend toward a scriptural interpretation, while others invent a new dimension to reflect the heart of the story. Hell is an intriguing notion in and of itself.
The majority of people assume that the people that live there are the most heinous of creatures. It is also the free-for-all home of demons and demonic spirits. It adds to the film’s intrigue when a literal portal to hell appears in a haunted mansion. We have compiled a list of ten heartbreakingly wonderful films that explore the depths of hell in all their splendor.
Drag Me to Hell (2009)
Christine Brown, a bank loan officer, wants to get promoted over her new co-worker Stu Robin. She is criticized by her boss for not demonstrating tough decision-making. To prove her boss wrong, she denies an extension of mortgage to an elderly gypsy woman, Sylvia Ganush. The elderly woman falls to her knees and begs Christine to not make her homeless. She is escorted out by security guards while accusing Christine of shaming her.
Later, Christine is ambushed and attacked by Ganush in the garage. Ganush puts a curse on Christine after ripping out a button from her coat. Christine learns that she is being haunted by a dark spirit after visiting a fortune teller with her boyfriend. The dark spirit continues to haunt Christine at her home. She hallucinates about the gypsy woman and throws up blood on her boss. Christine visits Ganush to ask for her forgiveness but realizes it’s too late, as she is dead. The fortune-teller explains that Christine is being haunted by Lamia, a powerful demon who torments her victims for three days before dragging them to hell.
The extent of Lamia’s powers is shown during the opening sequence, where a boy is being haunted after stealing jewelry from a group of gypsies. Despite performing a séance to get rid of the curse, the boy is thrown off a balcony and dragged to hell by demonic hands. In a desperate attempt to get rid of the curse, Christine had also offered her cat as a sacrifice and attempted to transfer her curse to a dead person. Yet, no one has managed to stop Lamia’s curse once it has been unleashed. She is the most feared demon of them all.
She is called upon by sorcerers, witches, and gypsies to seek revenge on those who have wronged them. Like most demons, Lamia is intensely violent and sadistic. She enjoys tormenting her targets for three days before taking them to hell. She has the ability to possess several people at once. Though the story of ‘Drag me to Hell’ is not set in the pits of fire, it does revolve around finding ways to avoid that fate. Although Lamia is the primary antagonist of the film, Hell appears as the undefeatable evil force no one stands a fight against. Sam Raimi brings back the good old days of horror with the jump scares and side effects. The horror-comedy is a roller coaster ride of shock and disgust.
Constantine (2005)
John Constantine was born with the psychic ability to see the true form of angels and demons, parading around the earth as humans. The angels and demons do not have the ability to force people to do anything against their will, but they could instigate one to do so by whispering into their ears. As a child, John was overwhelmed and confused by his visions. He had decided to kill himself as his ability was too much torture for him to bear. He was saved by the paramedics, but his soul was marked for hell because of his suicide attempt.
John begins to act as a guardian figure on Earth to atone for his sins. He assists the police in solving crimes that involve the supernatural and occult. He sends demons back to hell whenever they break the rules. He is approached by Angela Dodson, an LAPD Detective to help her investigate the suicide of her twin sister. Later, it is revealed that Angela’s sister was institutionalized because of her psychic visions.
Angela had the same gift but she had repressed her abilities during her childhood. There was a standing wager between God and Satan for the souls of all mankind, that prevented the Angels and Demons from manifesting on Earth. They could possess and influence humans. However, half-breeds were exempt from the rules of the wager. Constantine’s investigations reveal that Mammon was planning to return to Earth. He realizes that hell was about to break loose on Earth, as Gabriel had been conspiring with Mammon. Frustrated with God’s favoritism towards humans, Gabriel assumed that humans could become worthy of God’s love through repentance and faith, after bringing hell on Earth.
Since learning about his lung cancer, Constantine was desperate for salvation to avoid going to Hell. When he went to Gabriel for advice, he is told that his motive behind helping people wasn’t selfless, hence his soul couldn’t be redeemed. Mammon, the son of Satan, was tired of living under the shadow of his father. He wanted to rule Earth, to have a kingdom of his own. Gabriel saw this as an opportunity to get even with God’s beloved humans.
Throughout the film, Constantine and Angela try to figure out a way to prevent hell from breaking loose on Earth and saving humankind. Constantine takes you on a journey to the world of Angels, Demons, and Half-breeds; a supernatural realm visible only to those with psychic abilities. As the story progresses, you get engrossed in the politics of Heaven and Hell, and the conspiracy of those who want to challenge the power dynamics. Constantine is driven by characters who are heavily flawed and convincing. The film is packed with special effects and action scenes that keep you entertained for the entire run.
As Above, So Below (2014)
Scarlet Marlowe, an Alchemy scholar, is determined to continue the work of her deceased father. She narrowly escapes death while trespassing on a hidden catacomb near the Iranian border. With the help of Reza, Scarlet is able to access the catacomb that she wanted to but is suggested to do so in a hurry as it was going to be demolished any second. They hide from the soldiers before Scarlet finds the inscription she was searching for.
She decides to chisel it away as the structure was going to be destroyed anyway. She finds a bull statue and a rose key covered in markings, after knocking it away. She continues to capture the statue in her camera, as sirens approach to demolish the structure. Reza drags her out just in time and warns her against looking for the philosopher’s stone as it was the very reason that drove her father to insanity. Ignoring Reza’s warning, Scarlet reaches Paris in search of the philosopher’s stone, which according to myth could turn base metals into Gold. Scarlet along with Benji and George tries to translate the rose key and decides to go 741 feet underground in the search of hell and treasure.
The night before they leave for excavation, Benji notices a girl staring at him in a nightclub. The crew arrives at the catacomb the next day and enters through a small hole, one by one. The group splits up and everyone goes in a different direction. Papillion comes across a group of women chanting to perform a ritual. Benji freaks out after locking eyes with the strange girl who was staring at him last night. As the group continues their excavation, strange occurrences take place. George freaks out after finding a piano that was a replica of the one he used to play with his brother Danny. The A4 key in the piano seemed to be broken, just like the one from George’s childhood. The journey continues to get stranger as the group continues to walk deeper into the catacombs.
The entrance to the tunnel in the catacomb was similar to the description of the entrance of hell in Dante’s inferno. As their entrance mysteriously disappeared, there was no way out except going through the deep tunnels. Strange visions began to haunt the group as they continued to die, one by one. The crew was dragged through the nine rings of hell; limbo, lust, gluttony, etc. as described in Dante’s inferno, below the streets of Paris. Narrated in the form of found footage,’ As Above So Below’ packs in its fair share of scary scenes.
Although most of the tropes used in the movie are often overused in the horror genre, the movie does create an eerie claustrophobic atmosphere with the dark tunnels. The film was actually shot inside the catacombs in France instead of the usual set. Much like Dante in Inferno, George was reluctant to walk through the tunnels of hell but he was forced to do so because of the cops chasing them. The group finds themselves in hell as they refuse to acknowledge the sins committed by them.
Just like in Dante’s hell, the group was unable to leave the same way they came, after entering the tunnels. Even though found footage is a common method of storytelling in horror movies, the plot of ‘As Above So Below’ is original and refreshing. Packed with mythology, history, demons, and the occult, the film takes you on a very claustrophobic journey through the catacombs of hell.
Hellraiser (1987)
After buying a puzzle box from a dealer in Morocco, he tries to solve the puzzle in a bare attic. Hooked chains appear out of nowhere and tear him apart as soon as he solves the puzzle. The room gets covered in the remnants of his body and swinging chains. A mysterious figure clad in a black robe appears to pick up the box. The figure restores the box and the room back to their normal state. Later on, Frank’s brother Larry moves into the house with his family in hopes of rebuilding the strained relationship with his wife Julia.
Shortly before their wedding, Julia had an affair with Frank. Their teenage daughter Kristy decided to move into her own place instead of moving in with them. While carrying a mattress up the stairs, Larry cuts his hand and the blood drips into the attic floor, resurrecting Frank as a skinless corpse. Julia found Frank in the attic and decided to bring him people to drain to be fully restored, as she wasn’t over him. She began to lure men from the bar into the attic and injure them. Frank would drain their life by sinking his hand into the dying bodies.
Frank opens up to Julia about how he sought after the puzzle box to open himself up to a new realm of carnal pleasure, as he had exhausted all sensory experiences. On seeing her mother bring a man to the house, Kristy follows her to the attic and interrupts Frank while he is feeding. Frank tries to attack her but she creates a distraction by throwing the puzzle box out of the window and escaping. Kristy flees after reviving the box but collapses moments after.
She wakes up in a hospital and ends up summoning the Cenobites and a creature named Engineer after solving the box. Pinhead introduces the Cenobites and tries to force Kristy to return to their realm. She negotiates her freedom in exchange for turning in Frank, who has escaped them. They agree to her terms on the condition that her soul will be torn apart if Frank doesn’t confess to escaping them.
The Cenobites have been perceived as both Angels and Demons by humankind but they are neither. They are simply explorers from another dimension who can no longer differentiate between pain and pleasure and seek carnal pleasure. A small group of Cenobites arrives after one solves one of the many puzzle boxes. If Leviathan, the god of Hell, believes that the person is worthy of becoming a Cenobite, they are taken to Hell.
There they are remade in a transformation chamber that is operated by the engineer. During the transformation, the body is heavily mutilated and the blood is siphoned out to be replaced with blue fluid. Their mind is broken down to the point where they become completely devoid of their memories of human life. Even though the Hellraiser universe doesn’t revolve around biblical hell, the realm of the Cenobites represents an alternate version of hell. The plot of the movie is fuelled by love, lust, and sadomasochism. In the time when slasher movies were ruling the horror genre, Hellraiser brought gore to glory.
The Ninth Gate (1999)
Dean Corso, a rare book dealer from New York City is hired by Boris Balkan, a wealthy book collector. He had acquired a copy of The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows by Aristide Torchia, a seventeenth-century book that is rumored to be able to summon the devil. Allegedly, Torchia had collaborated with the devil to write the book and only three copies remained in the world, as the rest were burned for heresy. According to Balkan, only one of the copies is authentic and he wanted Corso to inspect the two other books and figure out which one is the original.
A mysterious woman seems to follow Corso during his travels. Andrew Telfer had killed himself after selling his copy of The Nine Gates to Balkan. Corso interviews Liana Telfer, Andrew’s widow. She wanted to persuade Corso into selling the book to her by seducing him. But she gets aggressive and attacks him after he refuses to sell the book to her. The bookseller to whom Corso had entrusted the book, is found hanging in his store, resembling an engraving in the book. Corso travels to Spain after retrieving the book to meet the Cenzis brothers, who owned Balkan’s copy before the Teflers. They point out that out of the nine engravings, only six are signed A.T, and the other three signed L.C.F. stands for Lucifer.
The search takes Corso to Portugal, where he meets with Victor Fargas, one of the owners of a copy of The Nine Gates. On noticing the subtle differences in the way L.C.F was signed on the book, Corso reports the observation to Balkan. Corso is asked to acquire Fargas’s copy but the next day Corso finds out that Fargas has been drowned. He retrieves the copy from the fireplace and goes to Paris in search of the third copy which is owned by Baroness Kessler.
She refuses Corso as he was employed by Balkan. However, Kessler agrees to show him the copy on learning about the three L.C.F engravings on the books that make a complete set of nine. But her library is set on fire; she is strangled and Corso gets attacked. On returning to his hotel, Balkan discovers that his copy is missing. He finds the book in a manor being used by a satanic cult.
On his quest to investigate the copies of The Nine Gates, Corso discovers that the people involved are mysteriously dying. It intrigues him to find out the truth behind the book which can supposedly make the owner extremely powerful. The people in possession of the copies were interested in occult studies and were probably involved with satanic cults. The fact that Satan himself was involved while writing the book gets a lot of attention from those who worship him.
The mysterious girl who was lurking around Corso all this time was the devil in disguise. Others continued to search for him, while he was hiding amongst them in plain sight. The seven serpents in the engravings represented the seven deadly sins that Corso committed gradually through the course of the film. The plot of The Ninth Gate slowly develops into a thriller. Instead of scaring the audience with demons jumping out of nowhere, it hides the devil right before our eyes. Every time you watch the movie, you discover a detail you had missed out on before. The film was adapted from the novel The Club Dumas and the stories revolved around a secret society obsessed with serialized novels.
Event horizon (1997)
In the year 2047, a distress signal is received from the Event Horizon. The starship mysteriously reappeared in a decaying orbit around Neptune, after disappearing during its maiden voyage to Proxima Centauri seven years ago. Rescue vessel Lewis and Clark is dispatched with the crew consisting of Captain Miller, Lieutenant Starck, Pilot Smith, Medical technician Peters, Engineer Ensign Justin, Doctor DJ, rescue technician Cooper, and Dr. William Weir, the designer of Event Horizon. The crew is briefed about the ship’s experimental gravity drive, which generates an artificial black hole and uses it to bridge two points in space-time.
It reduces the travel time of astronomical distances. DJ notices that the distress signal consists of several screams and howls, and discerns the Latin phrase for save me being spoken. The crew finds evidence of massacre after boarding the Event Horizon. The ship’s gravity drive activates while the crew searches for survivors and briefly pulls Justin into the resulting portal. The incident causes a shock wave and damages Lewis and Clark. The crew has no other option than to board the Event Horizon.
Justin gets traumatized by what he sees on the other side and emerges in a catatonic state. Miller saves him while he attempts suicide by decompression. The crew is forced to place him in stasis. Soon the team begins to experience hallucinations where only they can see and experience apparitions of individuals from their past. The crew comes across video footage of the previous crew fornicating and mutilating each other, after engaging in the gravity drive. At the end of the video (who?) gouges his eyes out from the socket, and speaks the complete phrase of the distress call that DJ translates to save yourself from hell.
The ship’s gravity drive had opened a gateway to a hellish dimension outside the known universe. Miller decided to destroy the Event Horizon and ordered an evacuation as the ship had somehow obtained sentience. Stranded in infinite space, the crew is fated to experience immeasurable terror. The combination of science fiction and horror created a distinct ominous atmosphere. The accessibility to the hellish dimension through the black hole was driving the crew members crazy, just as it did to the previous crew. Instead of burning the crew with hellfire, the ship torments the crew with their past.
The unseen evil gets the crew paranoid, as they begin to lose grasp over their sanity. The initial 130 minute cut of the film was so graphically violent that it made the test audience and the studio balk at the finished product. The production house had ordered Anderson to cut down the film by 30 minutes, to tone down the violence. Event Horizon manages to scare you for a long time without giving you a visible antagonist. Despite the gore being toned down for the final cut, the atmosphere of the haunted spaceship lingers for a long time.
Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993)
Jason Vorhees was resurrected a few years after his death in Manhattan. He returned to Camp Crystal Lake to continue stalking and slashing new prey. One of the lone women he was stalking was an undercover FBI agent, who lured him into an ambush. He was obliterated by heavily armed FBI and SWAT agents and his remains were sent to a morgue. Jason’s still-beating heart lures the coroner into eating it and he gets possessed by the soul of the serial killer.
He then escapes the morgue by killing another coroner and the FBI guards. Vorhees arrives at Crystal Lake to kill the teenagers partying at the site. When the cops arrive to investigate the scene, Jason kills one of them and possesses the other. Creighton Duke, the bounty Hunter makes the discovery that only the members of Jason’s bloodline can truly kill him, but he will return to his nearly invincible state if he possesses one of them. Diana Kimble, Jason’s half-sister, her daughter Jessica, and her granddaughter Stephanie are the only living relatives of Jason Vorhees. Soon, Jason arrives at Diana’s house to torment his remaining family.
Before going to hell, Jason brought hell to his living relatives and the teens he usually slashed at Crystal Lake. His supernatural ability to possess others makes him even more dangerous as there’s no way of identifying who he is possessing. Instead of the usual slaughters at Crystal Lake, the Final Friday movie takes a different approach. It not only focuses Jason’s attention from the usual teens to find his family members, but it also doesn’t show Jason in his physical form for most of the movie as he is possessing one person after another.
‘The Final Friday’ drifted farther away from the usual template of the ‘Friday the Thirteenth’ films, despite starting in a similar manner. The film peaks at the scene where Jason is blown up into pieces by the feds. The plot gets crazier after Jason possesses the coroner who eats his heart. The film pays homage to the other movies in the genre, with the Necronomicon from the evil dead. The gunfights and slow-motion scenes are well executed. One needs to see the film from an objective lens, instead of treating it as another ‘Friday the thirteenth’ franchise to truly appreciate it.
The Gate (1987)
Glen, a twelve-year-old kid, feels disturbed because of a nightmare about finding his home abandoned and his treehouse collapsing after getting struck by lightning. He wakes up the next day to realize that the tree from his nightmares has been cut down by workers and they have unearthed a geode. Glen brings his friend Terry to investigate the scene. The kids discover a larger geode, despite the workers attempting to fill the hole left by the tree. Glen catches a splinter, causing him to leave a drop of his blood.
Glen’s fifteen-year-old sister is left in charge of the house after their parents leave for three days. Al decides to use the opportunity to throw a party. After reading strange incantations from a notebook, Glen and Terry break open the geode. While Al’s friends were playing a levitating game downstairs, they were shocked to see Glen levitating. That night, Terry mistakes his dog Angus for an apparition of his dead mother, and Glen notices his bedroom walls stretching. Terry brings a heavy metal album, whose lyrics are based on The Dark Book, to Glen’s house.
He speculates that they might have unintentionally opened a gateway to a domain of evil gods in the backyard. He assumes that depositing a sacrifice in the hole would complete the summoning. Oblivious to the dangers of it, Al’s friend buries Angus in the hole and completes the process. The boys read a section from the Dark Book to close the gates, and assume that they have succeeded in seeing the hole closed. The same night, demons crawl out of the ground and begin to torment them. Angus’s corpse ends up in Terry’s bed and a swarm of moths shatters Glen’s window.
After the nightmare about his treehouse getting thunderstruck, Glen and Terry unleash Hell from the backyard by listening to heavy metal lyrics in reverse. The demons and other evil forces terrorize them that night. Demonic arms appear from under Al’s bed and try to pull her down under. When the kids flee the house they are greeted by their parents, who are actually demons impersonating them. Al volunteers to inspect the yards but the others warn her against it after seeing it swarming with small demons.
The Dark book bursts into flames before Terry can retrieve it. They have no other option than to rely on the Bible to stop the creatures. Nonetheless, Terry slips and falls into the hole while it closes, and gets attacked by the small demons before getting saved by Al and Glen. Throwing the Bible into the hole seems to close it, but it’s not the end to their terror. The kids of the 80s and 90’s probably remember getting scared while watching the film on cable or their VCR. The film does a commendable job with the special effects considering the era and the budget. There’s not much blood, gore or jump scares but ‘The Gate’ is still capable of giving you nightmares.
Spawn (1997)
Jason Wynn assigned the US Marine Force Recon Lieutenant Colonel and CIA operative Al Simmons to infiltrate a biochemical weapons plant in North Korea. Simmons’s moral qualm about the nature of his work was growing by the day. He was unaware that Wynn had tasked his top assassin, Jessica Priest, to eliminate Simmons during his mission. Simmons’s body is set ablaze by Wynn, and the flames cause the plant to explode. Naturally, Simmons finds himself in hell after his death. Malebolgia, one of the rulers of hell, offers him a deal with the devil.
Simmons would be able to return to Earth and see his fiancé, Wanda Blake, in exchange for becoming his eternal servant and the leader of his army in Armageddon. Simmons agrees to the conditions and returns to Earth as Spawn, only to realize that five years have passed since his death, and Wanda has settled down with his best friend Terry Fitzgerald. A clown-like demon named Violator was sent by Malebolgia to act as Spawn’s guide to the path of evil. Spawn goes on to befriend Cogliostro, a fellow hellspawn, and a homeless boy called Zack.
Cogliostro had managed to free his soul and now fought for heaven. Wynn had become a weapons dealer and developed a deadly biological weapon called ‘heat 16’. Unable to resist his urge for revenge, Spawn launched an attack on Wynn but he managed to escape with his neoplasm armor. The attack had put Wynn on high alert. Taking Violator’s advice, he develops a device attached to his heart that’ll trigger the release of ‘Heat 16’ worldwide if his vital signs flatline. Simmons finds himself in a tight spot as Malebolgia wants to initiate the apocalypse with the death of Wynn.
Spawn is based on the Image Comics character of the same name. The film explores the origin story of Spawn, who was resurrected as a reluctant leader of Hell’s army after getting assassinated by his superior. It was one of the first films to feature a person of color in the role of a major comic book superhero. Spawn finds himself in a battle against hell, after refusing to instigate the apocalypse by killing Wynn. Of course, it’s mandatory for a comic book-based superhero movie to be packed with action sequences! The character of Violator represents the charm of the campy villains of horror films at that time, who balanced it out with humor. The film tried to pack in too much plot in too little time but the end product was worth the watch. Simmons not only has to fight against hell, but he also has to cope with the fact that his fiancé has moved on and she can no longer accommodate him in her future or present.
Amityville dollhouse (1996)
Bill and Claire Martin move into a new house with their family after getting hitched. Bill had constructed the new house by himself. He finds a dollhouse in the shed, shortly after moving in. The dollhouse seemed to be a replica of 112 Ocean Avenue, the site of the Amityville massacre of 1974. Bill brings it into the house and puts it in the garage. Later that night, the fireplace turns on by itself and heats up the entire house. Bill has a vision of his daughter Jessica burning to death in the fireplace. The next morning, Claire suggests gifting the dollhouse to Jessica for her birthday after finding it in the garage. Marla and Tobias arrive to celebrate Jessica’s birthday.
They get visibly uncomfortable after seeing the dollhouse and the miniature chest of dolls but Jessica seems elated by the gift. Strange incidents begin to occur over the next couple of days. Jimmy loses his pet mouse after it finds its way into the dollhouse. At the same time, Jessica is confronted by a giant mouse hiding under her bed. Claire begins to involuntarily lust her eldest stepson, while Bill is haunted with nightmares about voodoo dolls and the death of his family. He used to have premonitory dreams as a child and had dreamt about his parents dying in a fire, days before they died in a similar manner.
The haunted dollhouse represents the extension of a hellish portal to the Amityville Dollhouse. Strange phenomena begin when Bill comes across it and started to have his premonitory nightmares once again. The miniature chest of dolls was intended to be used for voodoo practice. The house was built around the fireplace, which also worked as a portal for the dollhouse. Demons trapped in the voodoo dolls had escaped and wreaked havoc on the house and its inhabitants. The hauntings don’t revolve around the original ground of the Amityville massacre; the dollhouse replica is the only connection to the site. It was presumably present at the Amityville house at some point and got infested by the evil spirit. The stories of the films replace the original story of the drug-fueled murders with that of hauntings of demons and evil spirits. Before the 2005 reboot, the Amityville Dollhouse was one of the best sequels of the franchise.