Sam Raimi, renowned horror movie director, has never been a major fan of horror movies. The Evil Dead creator only created The Evil Dead because he wanted to get into movies, and at the precocious age of 19 understood the surest, cheapest way was a creepy horror movie.
Buy Drag Me to Hell 4K UHDHis major influences were not Bava, Val Lewton, or Tom Browning. The Three Stooges were Sam Raimi’s biggest influence. That influence is submerged in the original Evil Dead, but completely present in the sequel, the incandescently wacky Evil Dead II.
After that, his career took many turns, mostly away from horror, until Raimi became (rather briefly) the director with the highest grossing film of all-time, Spider-Man. For nerds like me, who had followed him for years before, it was kind of a coronation. Spider-Man 2 was considered the best superhero movie ever when it came out, and still is according to some.
But Hollywood giveth, and Hollywood taketh away. Spider-Man 3 contained many elements Raimi didn’t like (an old-school Spider-Man fan, he didn’t care for Venom.) And though it made money, it didn’t make any friends.
So Sam, a wildly successful TV producer who probably didn’t need this kind of trouble, still wanted to make movies. And fell back to an old script he wrote with his brother in the ’90s, Drag Me to Hell.
And it’s pretty great.
Drag Me to Hell stars the luminous Alison Lohman (Christine) in one of her last roles, before she decided she liked being a mom rather than wrestling with hell demons in a mud pit. Christine’s a loan officer. In order to secure her position as the next assistant manager, she refuses a loan to a creepy gypsy woman. Creepy gypsy doesn’t like this, and so, of course, curses her to hell.
Christine doesn’t take much mind of this… until she has a pitched battle with the woman in her car. This culminates in her shoving a ruler down the woman’s throat. She coughs it out.
This is the basic tone of the film. Realistic scenes (Christine being condescended to by her boss, a boring but pleasant date with her boyfriend, played by Justin Long) juxtapose with wild outlandish battles inside of a mini-Sedan, or her being slammed against her wardrobe by unseen spirits from hell.
Her boyfriend thinks she’s being paranoid. She tries to keep up normal appearances at work, but that’s hard when you’re also vomiting blood on your boss. She consults with a medium who (hilariously) tries to refund her money because he doesn’t want anything to do with real evil spirits.
I’ve seen this film a few times but kicked myself mentally when I read a review comparing it to Jaques Tourneur’s Night of the Demon. That’s one of my all-time favorite films, and it definitely parallels with this. That movie is about Satanist scholars, and the attempt to escape certain death handed out by a demon. It also has an immensely creepy séance scene. Drag Me to Hell has an even creepier one, with a talking goat.
But it amounts to the same thing: don’t engage with evil forces, even inadvertently, or you might find yourself… dragged to hell.
This new 4K release contains both the theatrical and unrated version of 4K, which is welcome. Several 4K rereleases only have the theatrical in the higher resolution, which is a bummer. This is a new 4K transfer and it looks fantastic. The one issue with the film’s visuals are some very dodgy CGI, but they were dodgy when the film was new.
I do not think Drag Me to Hell is a great movie… but I love it. It has a fantastic score by Christopher Young. The wonderful filmmaking style effortlessly flits between the comic and horrific. I don’t think it’s Sam Raimi’s best film (that’s A Simple Plan, which finally came to 4K this week.) But it’s a completely unapologetic horror film. It’s funny, but it’s also creepy, and means it.
Drag Me to Hell has been released on 4K UHD by Scream Factory. The release has three discs: a 4K disc with both the theatrical and unrated versions of the film, and two Blu-rays with the respective versions. All of them are derived from the new 4K scan.
On the Unrated Blu-ray, the sole video extra is a new feature length documentary, “Pardon My Curse” (115 min), featuring new and archival interviews from several people involved in the production.
The Theatrical Blu-ray contains numerous archival video extras. These include “To Hell and Back: An Interview with Actress Alison Lohman” (13 min); “Curses!: An Interview with Actress Lorna Raver” (16), who played the gypsy woman; “Hitting All the Right Notes: An Interview with Composer Christopher Young” (17 min); Production Video Diaries (35 min) which consist of behind-the-scenes footage, “Vintage Interview with Director Sam Raimi and Actors Alison Lohman and Justin Long” (34 min); and a trailer, TV spots, and an image gallery.
