Drag Me to Hell

Drag Me to Hell
Promotional poster
Directed by	Sam Raimi
Written by	Sam Raimi Ivan Raimi
Produced by	Grant Curtis Sam Raimi Robert G. Tapert Associate Producer: Ivan Raimi Co-Producer: Cristen Carr Strubbe Executive Producer: Joshua Donen Joseph Drake Nathan Kahane
Starring	Alison Lohman Justin Long Lorna Raver Dileep Rao
Cinematography	Peter Deming
Edited by	Bob Murawski
Music by	Christopher Young
Production company	Ghost House Pictures
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release date	May 29, 2009
Running time	99 minutes
Country	Template:FilmUS
Languages	English Spanish
Budget	$30,000,000
Box office	$58,211,728

Drag Me to Hell is a 2009 horror film, written and directed by Sam Raimi, with a screenplay by Sam Raimi and Ivan Raimi. The plot revolves around Los Angeles loan officer Christine Brown (Alison Lohman), who tries to impress her boss by refusing to extend a loan to Mrs. Ganush (Lorna Raver). In retaliation, Ganush places a curse on Christine which, if not passed on to someone else within three days, will plunge her into the depths of Hell to burn for eternity.

Raimi wrote Drag Me to Hell before he had worked on the Spider-Man film series and was his first horror film since directing the Evil Dead film series. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and was released to very positive critical acclaim on its theatrical run in the United States and was a box office success.

Plot

In 1969, Pasadena, California, a young Mexican couple rushes to the mansion of wealthy medium Shaun San Dena (Flor de Maria Chahua). Their son had stolen a necklace from a group of gypsies three days prior, and since then, he has been complaining of seeing and hearing things. San Dena tries to help the boy in a seance, but she and the boy's parents are attacked by an unseen force, which then throws the boy from the second floor of San Dena's mansion to the first. The boy survives the fall, but as his parents run to help him, San Dena can only watch in horror as the floor opens up under him and he is pulled into Hell by demonic hands.

Forty years later, Christine Brown (Alison Lohman), a mild-mannered loan officer in Los Angeles, hopes to be promoted to assistant manager over her conniving co-worker, Stu Rubin (Reggie Lee). Christine's boss, Mr. Jacks (David Paymer), advises her that she needs to demonstrate that she can make tough decisions when she needs to. That same day, Mrs. Sylvia Ganush (Lorna Raver), an elderly gypsy woman, asks for a third extension on her mortgage because she is struggling with money due to an illness. To prove herself to Mr. Jacks, Christine, against her better judgment, decides to deny Ganush the extension. In desperation, Ganush prostrates herself before Christine, begging and kissing the hem of her skirt. As a small crowd gathers, Christine panics and screams for security, shoving Ganush away and shaming her in public. As security guards escort Ganush out, Mr. Jacks compliments Christine on how she handled the situation and implies that if she can close another big loan, the assistant manager position will be hers.

That night, Christine is attacked in her car by Ganush. After a violent struggle, Ganush removes a button from Christine's jacket and uses it to place a curse on her. Ganush disappears, leaving the cursed button with Christine. Later, Christine's boyfriend, college professor Clay Dalton (Justin Long), takes her to a coffee shop to comfort her. On the way home, they pass a fortune teller's store, and Christine insists they go in. There, they meet the fortune teller Rham Jas (Dileep Rao), who tells Christine that she has a dark spirit upon her.

Alone at home, Christine is attacked by the aforementioned dark spirit, which appears as the silhouette of a goat's head. The spirit breaks some windows, cuts the power, and throws Christine across the room, causing minor injuries. Clay assumes that Mrs. Ganush followed them and attacked Christine again. However, when she insists that no one attacked her, they contact a psychologist. The psychologist says that victims of assault often relive past trauma, which seems to settle Christine. That night, Christine dreams that Ganush attacks her in bed, and at work the next day, she scares off Stu after hallucinating him having Ganush's hideous hand and then has a nosebleed, which becomes violently projectile and soaks Mr. Jacks when he tries to aid her. Fleeing work with Stu stealing her paperwork, she tries to track down Ganush at the home of her cynical goth granddaughter Ilenka (Bojana Novakovic) who's embittered by Christine's action against her grandmother. There, Christine learns that Ganush died the previous night, and Ilenka is in the process of holding a memorial service for her. Christine makes a scene by accidentally knocking over Ganush's body, and Ilenka tells her that she deserves what is coming for her.

Christine consults Rham Jas again, who tells her that the spirit haunting her is actually a powerful demon called the Lamia, and that she is to be tormented by it for three days before being dragged to Hell to burn for eternity. Horrified by this revelation, Christine sacrifices her pet kitten in hopes that it will satisfy the Lamia, after Rham Jas informs her that she can try to appease the spirit by offering it an animal sacrifice. When the Lamia torments her during dinner with Clay's parents, which causes Christine's erratic behavior to frighten the Daltons and make them forbid Clay to see her, and she is attacked by a ghostly figure of Mrs. Ganush in her workshed, Christine and Clay decide to pay $10,000 to enlist the help of the now elderly Shaun San Dena (Adriana Barraza). When the bank can't help with Christine's problem, she is forced to sell all her possessions to a pawn shop to get the money. However, Clay has already paid since he cares about her.

After the payment, Clay and Christine drive to San Dena's mansion, which has fallen into desrepair since the incident forty years ago. San Dena prepares a seance, the goal of which is to trap the Lamia in a live goat and kill it, which will destroy it. This plan backfires, however, when the aide to San Dena mistakenly cuts the rope securing the goat, which immediately bites him and allows Lamia to possess him. The Lamia attacks Rham Jas and Christine, then regurgitates Christine's kitten and vows that it will not rest until it takes Christine's soul to Hell. San Dena manages to banish the Lamia from the seance, but dies in the process.

Rham Jas tells Christine that the Lamia will still return for her in just one more day unless she can find a way to stop it for good. He then tells her the only way to get rid of the curse is to give the cursed item to somebody else as a gift, thereby passing the curse on to that person. Christine seals the button from her jacket in an envelope, but nearly loses it when the bag containing the envelope falls over, spilling it and the other contents out. After searching for a recipient at a diner, Christine considers giving it to Stu, since his actions cheated them both out of the promotion, but she cannot bring herself to condemn another living person to Hell, no matter how mean or corrupt they are. She then decides to give the button to Mrs. Ganush. Rham Jas confirms the plan will work, since even after death, a person's soul lives on. Christine drives to the cemetery where Ganush is buried and digs up her grave. In a torrential downpour, Christine jams the envelope in the old woman's mouth, formally giving it as a gift, and leaves, believing she has beaten the curse.

The next day, Christine goes to Los Angeles Union Station to meet Clay, who is preparing to propose to her; they have plans to spend a relaxing weekend in Santa Barbara. Christine also learns she got the promotion at the bank after Stu's deceit was unveiled. As the train approaches, Christine confesses to Clay that she could have given Mrs. Ganush the loan, but chose not to (she had lied to him and Mrs. Ganush earlier in the film, saying there was nothing she could do). Suddenly, Clay gives her the envelope with the button in it. She had dropped it in his car the night before, when her bag fell over, and accidentally picked a similar one up, which contained a coin she had given to Clay at the start of the film. Horrified, Christine falls onto the tracks as a train barrels into the station. Just before she is struck, demonic arms reach up from under her and pulls her into a fiery hole that appears beneath. She screams to Clay for help, but he is unable to assist her as the train passes over her. Christine's face begins to dissolve and burn away as she is dragged to Hell. All Clay can do is watch as his girlfriend is pulled to her doom, then he looks at the button in his hand as the film ends.

Cast

Director Sam Raimi, actors Dileep Rao, Alison Lohman, and Justin Long discussing the film at San Diego Comic-Con International in 2008.

• Alison Lohman as Christine Brown
• Justin Long as Professor Clayton "Clay" Dalton
• Lorna Raver as Mrs. Sylvia Ganush
• Dileep Rao as Rham Jas
• David Paymer as Mr. Jim Jacks
• Reggie Lee as Stu Rubin
• Adriana Barraza as Shaun San Dena
• Meagan Good as Heather
• Chelcie Ross as Leonard Dalton
• Molly Cheek as Trudy Dalton
• Bojana Novakovic as Ilenka Ganush
• Flor de Maria Chahua as Young Shaun San Dena
• Art Kimbro as the voice of the Lamia

Production

Background

The original story for Drag Me to Hell was written ten years before the film by Sam Raimi and Ivan Raimi. The film went into production under the name The Curse. Sam and Ted Raimi wrote the script as a morality tale, desiring to write a story about a person who wants to be a good person, but makes a sinful choice out of greed for their own betterment and pays the price for it. Sam and Ivan tried to make the character of Christine the main focal point in the film, and tried to have Christine in almost all the scenes in the film. Elements of the film's story are drawn from the British horror film Night of the Demon such as the similar shaped demons and the three day curse theme in the film. Unlike with his past horror films, Ivan and Sam Raimi wanted the film to be a PG-13 rated horror film not wanting Drag Me to Hell to be strictly driven by gore stating "I didn't want to do exactly the same thing I had done before".

After finishing the script, Raimi desired to make the picture after the first draft of the script was completed, but other projects such as the Spider-Man film series became a nearly decade-long endeavor, pushing opportunities to continue work on Drag Me to Hell to late 2007. After the previous three Spider-man films, Raimi came back to the script of Drag Me to Hell, wanting to make a simple and lower budget film. In 2007, Sam Raimi's friend and producer Rob Tapert of Ghost House Pictures had the company sign-on to finance the film. Universal Studios agreed to distribute domestically.

Casting

After completing the script and having the project green lit, Sam Raimi started casting the film. Ellen Page was originally cast for the main role of Christine, but dropped out of the project due to SAG strike-related scheduling issues. The main role eventually went to Lohman, who didn't enjoy horror films, but enjoyed doing the stunts during filming. Stage actress Lorna Raver auditioned for the role of Mrs. Ganush. Raver was not aware of the specific nature of her character until being cast, stating that all she had "read was about a little old lady coming into the bank because they're closing down her house. It was only later that I saw the whole script and said, 'Oh my!'". To prepare for this role, Raver met with a Hungarian dialect coach and asked to have the portions of the script translated into Hungarian. Raimi would later ask Raver to use some of the Hungarian words in the scenes of Ganush's attacking Christine. Dileep Rao, who plays Rham Ja, made producer Grant Curtis mildly hesitant in casting him, stating that when during his audition "he was a little bit younger than he read in the script. But as we were looking at his reading, Sam said, 'There's no minimum age requirement on wisdom.' Dileep has that wisdom and presence on screen, and that’s what made him right. Once he got on camera, he brought that shoulder for Alison to lean on." Many of the actors playing secondary characters in Drag Me to Hell have appeared previously in Raimi's films, including Joanne Baron, Tom Carey, Molly Cheek, Aimee Miles, John Paxton, Ted Raimi, Bill E. Rogers, Chelcie Ross, and Octavia Spencer.

Filming

Production for Drag Me to Hell began on location in Tarzana, California.

Effects

The effects in Drag Me to Hell were created in many different ways, including green screen, puppets, prosthetics and computer-generated imagery. The director of photography on the film was Peter Deming who previously worked on Raimi's film Evil Dead 2. Deming tried to use realistic lighting in the film, stating that they "went with a lot of source lighting and didn't correct the odd lighting sources, like in the garage where everything is blue-green. Normally, you'd put all corrected bulbs in, but we went with what was there, including the shots in the street. We used the streetlight look and mixed that with interior lighting. There were a lot of odd color sources that we chose to leave the way they would be naturally. It’s a heightened sense of realism." One of the earliest projects the special effects teams did was to how to do the scene where Mrs. Ganush's attacks Christine in her car. In order to film the action, which included close-ups of Christine jamming her foot on the pedal, hitting the brake and shifting gears, the team created a puzzle car which allowed the front engine compartment and back trunk — as well as all four sides and doors — to come away from the car. The roof came off in two directions.

Reception

Drag Me to Hell was first shown to the public as a "Work in Progress" print at the South by Southwest on March 15, 2009. The film debuted in its full form at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, where it was shown out of competition on May 21 as a midnight screening.

Box office

The film was released in American theaters on May 29, 2009. The film placed fourth at the box office during its opening weekend earning over $15,000,000 then fell to seventh place during the next week earning over $7,000,000. As of July 12, the film has grossed over $41,449,165 domestically and over $16,703,503 internationally, for a worldwide total of over $58,152,668.

Critical reception

Drag Me to Hell received strong positive reviews on its original release. Rotten Tomatoes reported that 93 percent of critics had given the film positive reviews, based upon a sample of 179. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film has received an average score of 83, based on 32 reviews.

Positive critical reception of the movie generally praised the film's scary but humorous and campy tone. Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave the film an A rating stating that "Raimi has made the most crazy, fun, and terrifying horror movie in years." Besty Sharkey of the Los Angeles Times praised the film, stating that it "should not be dismissed as yet another horror flick just for teens. The filmmakers have given us a 10-story winding staircase of psychological tension that is making very small circles near the end." Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune wrote described the film as a "hellaciously effective B-movie comes with a handy moral tucked inside its scares, laughs and Raimi's specialty, the scare/laugh hybrid." Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times wrote a positive review, stating the film "is a sometimes funny and often startling horror movie. That is what it wants to be, and that is what it is." A positive review from Variety found the film's plot to be "Scant and barren of subtext, the pic is single-mindedly devoted to pushing the audience's buttons...Still, there's no denying it delivers far more than competing PG-13 thrillers."

There were few mixed or negative reviews, and those there were did not agree about what they disliked. For instance, Kyle Smith of the New York Post thought it was cheesy, with too many "gross-outs", Rex Reed of the New York Observer thought that the plot wasn't believable enough, and Peter Howell of The Toronto Star disliked Lohman's performance and thought it was "just not very funny".

External links

• Drag Me to Hell
• Drag Me to Hell at IMDb
• Drag Me to Hell at AllMovie
• Drag Me to Hell at Rotten Tomatoes
• Drag Me to Hell at Box Office Mojo