Drag Me To Hell

[modage]

Release Date: May 29, 2009
Director: Sam Raimi
Writer: Sam Raimi, Ivan Raimi, Jeff Lynch

DRAG ME TO HELL tells the story of Christine Brown (Alison Lohman), an ambitious L.A. loan officer with a charming boyfriend, Professor Clay Dalton (Justin Long). Life is good until the mysterious Mrs. Ganush (Lorna Raver) enters their lives...and everything begins to unravel.

TRAILER: http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1810029193/video

[Stefen]

pwnt.

[SiliasRuby]

YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[jtm]

this looks like fun.

sam raimi going back to horror, oh yeah. just seems right.

i love the fact that almost the entire first half of the trailer is based around one scene. i wish we saw more of that in trailers.

even tho the second half was filled with the usual quick-cut "highlights", this still looks like fun.

[picolas]

why does this look good? seems like textbook shit to me.

..but that's the charm? that it's so aware of its shittiness? but this doesn't even appear to be charming shit.

and from the director of SPIDER-MAN 3??? if i had coffee i'd spit it all over the screen.

(note: i'm aware of who sam raimi is. i just also know he directed spider-man 3 recently.)

[jtm]

not sure if you're talking to me, but i didn't necessarily say this looked good, i just said it looked like fun.

it may very well be textbook (and i'm almost certainly sure it will be).. but that doesn't mean it can't be a fun night out at the movies on a late saturday night.... sometimes it's good to watch a movie that JUST entertains you. don''t bother trying to find a deeper meaning in it, just enjoy the hour and a half watching it. this seems like one of those films.

also, i've never watched a horror film and thought about how "charming" it is.

[RegularKarate]

Fun is the right word... I'm a sucker for actual Hell in movies.

This is showing at SXSW.  Hope to catch it.

[MacGuffin]

Sam Raimi Calls 'Drag Me To Hell' A 'Fun Horror Ride'
Source: MTV

In Sam Raimi's return to horror "Drag Me To Hell," a young woman (played by Alison Lohman) wants to impress her manager at the bank and goes along with an eviction notice on an elderly lady. Being a Sam Raimi film, you can probably imagine what happens.

"She makes one little mistake, one morally bankrupt, morally questionable decision, our hero will have none of it, she's chosen the wrong woman to screw over," he laughed. "And even though her character is a really good person, she's done something wrong and she basically spends the next 90 minutes paying for it and she is cursed and chased by this demon that over the next three days is going to appear more definitively in the world as we know it and on the third day, drags her kicking and screaming to hell."

"So it about her coming to terms of it, the realization that this is real, trying to convince her boyfriend this is really happening, and trying to figure out what she will do to rid herself of this curse."

Conceived by Raimi and his brother Ivan (who co-wrote, "Darkman" and "Army of Darkness"), the concept — based on a short story — actually goes way back to 1989 and actually inspired from their family's history.

"My mother has some gypsy blood in her and she believes her grandmother could give her the evil eye and a little bit of a curse on you if she wanted to. So my brother and I were always aware of that if you crossed anybody, you could get our grandmother's evil eye on you and that was something to be feared."

The director of the the "Evil Dead" and "Spider-Man" films insists that the story is a straightforward and uncomplicated one and the film's ambitions are to simply create a "horror ride."

"We just wanted to create a really fun experience for people to see in the theaters. You can bring your friends, and you can just scream and laugh, clutch each others hands and scream back at the screen if you need to, just an absurd spook-a-blast of a film."

[MacGuffin]

[Kal]

Great poster. I love the title of this movie.

[SiliasRuby]

This is getting to be one of my fav. anticipated films of 2009.

[Stefen]

Yeah, it looks like a lot of fun.

Is Alison Lohman the 00's version of Gretchen Mol in terms of hype?

[polkablues]

I actually haven't been noticing a lot of "next big thing" buzz around Lohman.  Maybe when Matchstick Men came out, but that died off pretty quick.

[MacGuffin]

Sam Raimi reveals why he loves horror from the set of Drag Me to Hell
Source: SciFi Wire

With the upcoming horror movie Drag Me to Hell, director Sam Raimi returns to the horror genre in which he first made a blood-spattery splash as a filmmaker, and SCI FI Wire was among a select group of journos on hand last June to watch the movie being made at 20th Century Fox's studios in Los Angeles. (This is the first of three set reports; look for parts two and three in the next couple of days.)

"It's kind of a medium [to] low-budget horror picture, and it's got some scares, and it's got a lot of fun stuff in it," Raimi said with typical modesty during a break in filming last June on a Fox soundstage. "You know, an old witchlike hag and just stuff that I enjoy in some types of horror pictures."

Here's how Universal Pictures (which is releasing the film) describes it: Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) is an ambitious L.A. loan officer with a charming boyfriend, professor Clay Dalton (Justin Long). Life is good until the mysterious Mrs. Ganush (Lorna Raver) arrives at the bank to beg for an extension on her home loan. Should Christine follow her instincts and give the old woman a break? Or should she deny the extension to impress her boss, Mr. Jacks (David Paymer) and get a leg up on a promotion? Christine fatefully chooses the latter, shaming Mrs. Ganush and dispossessing her of her home.

In retaliation, the old woman places the powerful curse of the Lamia on Christine, transforming her life into a living hell. Haunted by an evil spirit and misunderstood by a skeptical boyfriend, she seeks the aid of seer Rham Jas (Dileep Rao) to save her soul from eternal damnation.

"What I really liked about the script and Sam's process is it's not just a horror film, even though it is in that genre," Lohman said during a break. "It is primarily just a story of this regular, normal girl who is very happy in her life and just experiencing some really crazy things that are happening to her. ... I love that [Sam] brings a sense of humor to it, so it's not just a horror film; it has all of these different elements, and it's very layered."

Last June 5, we were on a set meant to represent the massive central room in a decaying Pasadena, Calif., mansion, the home of a medium played by Mexican actress Adriana Barraza. The room—a marbled circular chamber with four antechambers at each compass point—is the setting of a seance in which the medium will try to exorcise the Lamia tormenting Christine, with the help of Rham Jas and a fourth person.

The four are seated around a round table lit overhead by an old chandelier. Raimi, with a few days' beard growth and wearing a dark sport jacket over a T-shirt, calls out cues to the actors as the camera focuses on Lohman, who turns to look over her shoulder at something—a noise? a shadow?—coming up behind her.

There's also a white goat in the scene, next to the medium. The filmmakers will use a live goat in some scenes and an animatronic goat for others, but we won't give away the reason why.

As Raimi calls "action," he speaks to the actors: "The pressure's dropping. Dropping! ... It fades, it's gone! ... You're waiting. Waiting. Good!"

In another take, he talks as Lohman turns to look over her shoulder (and directly into the camera), fear in her eyes. Raimi: "A little creak ... It moves off ... A little more frightened."

On the fourth take, Lohman repeats the move, but she's breathing faster, more fearfully.

In another scene, the medium holds a knife, presses it to her forehead, kisses it. She talks to Christine, telling her that she will try to get the Lamia into the goat, and Christine must take the knife and ...

"Do you understand?" the medium intones. Christine speaks to Rham Jas: "What am I supposed to do?"

Rham Jas: "You must allow the dead in. ... You must say these words: 'I welcome the dead into my soul.' You must believe it."

Later, Raimi will explain why he enjoys doing a horror movie after much success with the Spider-Man franchise and such serious dramas as A Simple Plan and For Love of the Game. After all, it's been a long time since Raimi made a mark with his Evil Dead movies.

"I'm trying to make a horror movie that people go to, they laugh at, they think is suspenseful," Raimi said. "They get excited about ... the action, exciting monster sequences. They get scared. They go, 'Oh, gross,' and have those types of funhouse reactions. So it's a lower-brow goal that I really enjoy working in, this level. For me, it's a great weight off my shoulders."

Raimi added that the experiences he had on the big Hollywood movies have helped him relax while making this relatively small film. "The Spider-Man films are actually a tremendous amount of fun, but there's also a tremendous amount of responsibility, because they're expensive and the character is so beloved by so many people that you really have to be careful of what you're doing every moment," he said. "With a horror film that's an original piece, you really can just concentrate on making a blast. And you may fail, but at least there isn't all these other thoughts and concerns that you have to balance at the same time, so it's much more freeing, and you're really able to work with your team and create the best [movie] possible, with nothing else hindering you."

Drag Me to Hell opens May 29.

[SiliasRuby]

This is going to be the best horror film released this year.