Drag Me to Hell is a 2009 American supernatural horror film directed and co-written by Sam Raimi with Ivan Raimi, starring Alison Lohman, Justin Long, Lorna Raver, Dileep Rao, David Paymer, and Adriana Barraza. The story focuses on a loan officer who, in an effort to prove to her boss that she can make the "hard decisions" at work, chooses not to extend an elderly woman's mortgage. The old woman places a retaliatory curse on her that, after three days of escalating torment, will plunge her into the depths of Hell to burn for eternity.
Drag Me to Hell was developed by Sam and his brother, Ivan, who wrote the script for a film titled The Curse in the 1990s as a dark, cautionary fable. Conceived as a "cruel morality tale", the script was intentionally designed to punish a well-intentioned protagonist for making a single selfish mistake, capturing the visceral, slapstick-horror tone of Raimi’s earlier Evil Dead films. However, they shelved the project to focus on other films, eventually completing the script in 2007. Following the massive commercial success of his Spider-Man film trilogy (2002–2007), Sam Raimi wanted to return to his low-budget, independent horror roots. He partnered with Ghost House Pictures to produce the film independently from major studio constraints. It was shot in Tarzana, California in 2008 with a budget of $30 million.
Drag Me to Hell premiered at the SXSW on March 15, 2009, and was theatrically released in the United States on May 29, 2009, by Universal Pictures. The film received positive reviews from critics and grossed $90.8 million worldwide. It won the Saturn Award for Best Horror Film at the 36th Saturn Awards.
Plot In 1969 Pasadena, a Hispanic couple seek help from young medium Shaun San Dena, claiming their son Juan is hearing evil voices after having stolen a silver necklace from a Romani woman's wagon, despite his attempts to return it. San Dena prepares a séance, but an unseen force attacks them and drags Juan to Hell. San Dena vows to fight the demon again one day.
Forty years later, in present-day Los Angeles, bank loan officer Christine Brown vies for a promotion to assistant branch manager with her co-worker, Stu Rubin. Her boss, Jim Jacks, advises her to demonstrate tough decision-making. When Sylvia Ganush, an elderly and disheveled Romani woman, asks for a third extension on her mortgage due to economic problems resulting from an illness, Christine, against her better judgement, denies her request, and Sylvia desperately begs not to have her house repossessed. As security guards escort her out, she accuses Christine of publicly shaming her. Later, in the parking garage, Sylvia attacks her as she is leaving. After a struggle, Sylvia rips a button from Christine's coat and places a curse on it. After she returns it, she warns that Christine will soon come begging to her.
Christine and her boyfriend Clay Dalton, a college professor, visit fortune teller Rham Jas, who explains that a dark spirit has latched onto her. At home, the entity tortures Christine; at work, she suffers a violent nosebleed while hallucinating about Sylvia. As she leaves, Stu covertly takes a file from her desk. Christine visits Sylvia's granddaughter Ilenka, intending to apologize to Sylvia, but Ilenka reveals Sylvia has recently died. She inadvertently embarrasses the attendees at her funeral, and Ilenka warns her that she deserves her eventual fate. Jas explains to Christine that she has been inflicted with the curse of the Lamia or "Black Goat", an ancient and powerful demon that torments its victims for three days before literally dragging them to Hell. Following his suggestion of an appeasatory sacrifice, Christine reluctantly kills her pet kitten before meeting Clay's wealthy parents Trudy and Leonard at their house for dinner, during which grotesque hallucinations torment her further.
Jas offers to introduce a furious Christine to San Dena for $10,000, which a sympathetic Clay pays on her behalf. Revealing that she has been awaiting vengeance against the Lamia, San Dena and her assistant prepare a séance, attempting to trap the spirit in a goat and kill the animal to destroy the demon, but the entity possesses her, the goat and her assistant, the last of whom vomits up the corpse of Christine's deceased cat. After successfully banishing the Lamia, she dies soon afterwards. Jas seals the button in an envelope and tells Christine that she can remove the curse by giving the button to someone else, thus transferring the curse to them.
At a 24-hour diner, Christine telephones Stu, accusing him of stealing her file and demanding he meet her there, intending to present the cursed button to him. When he arrives, he successfully implores her to pity him and abstain from notifying Jacks about his transgressions. Consulting Jas, Christine learns she can formally offer the curse to the deceased, so she exhumes Sylvia's corpse and forces the envelope into her mouth. A massive downpour nearly traps her in the grave, but she successfully manages to escape.
Returning home, she ventures to Union Station, where Clay intends to propose to her. Jacks also informs Christine that she has received the promotion, Stu having been dismissed for stealing her file. At the station, Clay presents her with an envelope he had discovered in his car which contains her cursed coat button; before exhuming Sylvia, she had mistaken it for a similar envelope containing a rare coin and had given to Clay earlier. Horrified, she stumbles backwards onto the tracks; as a train speeds towards her, demonic hands emerge from the ground and drag her into Hell below. A horrified Clay, having watched from above, holds the button.
Cast
The film includes cameo appearances by Raimi himself as an uncredited ghost at the séance, his younger brother Ted as a doctor, and his eldest children Emma, Henry, and Lorne in minor roles. Frequent Raimi collaborator Scott Spiegel appears as a mourner at the death feast, while fellow frequent Raimi collaborator John Paxton and Irene Roseen appear as the old couple at the diner.
Themes and interpretations Drag Me to Hell has been noted for its relevance to the subprime mortgage crisis and more broadly, the Great Recession, which were ongoing at the time of the film's release. Director Sam Raimi reportedly considered this a coincidence, stating, "We just wanted to tell the story of a person who wants to be a good person but who makes a sinful choice out of greed, for their own benefit, and pays the price for it."
Also shortly after the film's release, a fan theory garnered attention online, positing that Christine—who is depicted as having been overweight in her youth—is experiencing hallucinations as a result of an eating disorder rather than a supernatural curse, with her delusions repeatedly involving food or vomiting.
Production
Background The original story for Drag Me to Hell was written ten years before the film went into production and was written by Sam Raimi and his brother Ivan Raimi. The film went into production under the name The Curse. The Raimis wrote the script as a morality tale, desiring to write a story about a character who wants to be a good person, but makes a sinful choice out of greed for her own betterment and pays the price for it. The Raimis 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. The most significant parallel is that both stories involve the passing of a cursed object, which has to be passed to someone else, or its possessor will be devoured by one or more demons. Unlike his past horror films, Raimi wanted the film to be rated PG-13 and not 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. Raimi offered director Edgar Wright the opportunity to direct Drag Me to Hell which Wright turned down as he was filming Hot Fuzz and felt that "If I did it, it would just feel like karaoke." After the previous three Spider-Man films, Raimi came back to the script of Drag Me to Hell, wanting to make a simpler and lower-budget film. In 2007, Sam Raimi's friend and producer Robert 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 greenlit, Raimi started casting the film. Elliot 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 Alison Lohman, who did not enjoy horror films, but enjoyed doing the stunts during filming. Stage actress Lorna Raver would audition 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 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 Jas, made producer Grant Curtis mildly hesitant in casting him, stating that 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 Raimi said he set out to create "a horror film with lots of wild moments and lots of suspense and big shocks that'll hopefully make audiences jump. But I also wanted to have a lot of dark humor sprinkled throughout. I spent the last decade doing Spider-Man and you come to rely on a lot of people doing things for you and a lot of help, but it's refreshing and wonderful to be reminded that, as with most filmmakers, the best way to do it is yourself, with a tight team doing the main jobs."
Production for Drag Me to Hell began on location in Tarzana, California. The production team included director of photography Peter Deming, production designer Steve Saklad and visual effects supervisor Bruce Jones. The film was produced by Grant Curtis and Rob Tapert. Tapert and Raimi are longtime collaborators, having attended college together in Michigan.
Editing