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Sam Raimi Gives Us One of the Best Horror Films in Years

Sam Raimi is probably best known these days as the director of Spider-Man movies, but he earlier made his mark by doing horror films like The Evil Dead (1981) and Army of Darkness (1992), and he returns to that kind of material in Drag Me to Hell (2009). This is a pulpy, playful, entertaining movie that combines tension with wit. It's more visceral than classic horror films, but avoids torture-porn.

The main character in Drag Me to Hell is Christine (Alison Lohman), a 20-something loan officer at a bank where she seeks to move up the corporate ladder. One day a disgusting old crone named Mrs. Ganush (Lorna Raver) comes in and begs for an extension — it would be the third — on her mortgage. Christine believes she must prove to the bank manager that she is tough enough to merit promotion, so she rejects Mrs. Ganush's pleas. That's when the old hag retaliates by putting a curse on the young loan officer, turning her life into a living hell.

The movie doesn't have much of a plot, but Raimi is enormously successful at getting viewers to feel as though they are going through unsettling experiences with the vulnerable Christine. Examples include when blood spews from her nose onto her boss, when she has to fight for her life against a demonic opponent, and when she ends up in an open grave with mud and water pouring in. Raimi manages to make banal things creepy: a handkerchief floating on the wind, an errant set of false teeth, an office stapler used as a weapon.

Viewers may chuckle, yet at the same time feel uneasy.

Production Video Diaries

The Drag Me to Hell DVD contains production video diaries consisting of 14 behind-the-scenes segments, typically lasting two to three minutes each, and running a total of 35 minutes. This bonus feature is hosted by actor Justin Long, who plays Christine's supportive boyfriend in the feature film.

There are production diary segments on makeup, set design, special effects and the like. One interesting segment is "The Goat," which shows that a trained goat named Billy was used for parts of the séance scene, but a puppet goat also had to be used because Billy was too cute and lovable. In the segment "Alison in Mud," leading lady Alison Lohman tells how the first mud product they dumped on her in the grave caused her to break out in hives, so they ended up using spa mud brought from Calistoga in the Napa Valley wine country. The segment "Alison's Wirework" shows the game young actress doing stunt work as she hangs from wires which yank her off the floor and swing her around the room upside down as she thrashes about.

DVD Details

Below I have listed all the details for the DVD containing Drag Me to Hell. The DVD contains two slightly different versions of the feature film, one rated PG-13 and the other unrated. The editing of the two versions has been done in such a way that they have virtually identical runtimes.

Release Date: October 13, 2009
Feature Film Runtime (Either Unrated Version or PG-13 Version): 1 hour 39 minutes
MPAA Rating: One Version Unrated, the Other PG-13 for Sequences of Horror Violence, Terror, Disturbing Images and Language
Aspect Ratio 2.40:1, Color
English 5.1 Dolby Digital
English 2.0 Dolby Digital
Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital
French 5.1 Dolby Digital
English Captions for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing
Spanish Subtitles
French Subtitles
Production Video Diaries (14 segments, total runtime = 35 min.)