Wednesday, May 27

• Channeling the Demon in New Clip from Drag Me to Hell

  In Seance, the latest clip from Drag Me to Hell, a seer (Adriana Barraza) channels the vengeance demon the old gypsy woman has summoned up in hopes of finding some way of placating it. Will it be satisfied with anything less than the soul of Christine Brown (Alison Lohman)? The disturbing laughter -- not to mention the weird gyrations of the seer's tongue -- suggest appeasement is, perhaps, not so easy.

  
  
  Next Showing: Drag Me to Hell debuts May 29

  Posted 05/27/2009 by Bill

  Related: Adriana Barraza | Alison Lohman | Drag Me to Hell

Tuesday, May 26

• Drag Me to Hell Is a "Morality Tale"

  

  The plot to Sam Raimi's return to horror, Drag Me to Hell, may seem tailor-made for our current economic crisis -- a loan officer angers a demon by rejecting an elderly woman's request for an extension on her mortgage -- but Raimi actually wrote the script for the film years ago with his brother, Ivan Raimi. In a recent interview, Raimi said:

  It's just a coincidence. It wasn't written to reflect anything about our society or to paint banks as villains.

  While debuting the film at Cannes, Raimi summed up the film's core concept:

  It's a simple morality tale about how greed leads to destruction.

  Drag Me to Hell stars Alison Lohman as loan officer Christine Brown; Justin Long as Projessor Dalton, Christine's boyfriend; and Lorna Raver as Mrs. Ganush, an elderly gypsy in league with the devil.

  
  
  

  Drag Me to Hell - Trailer

  Alison Lohman Stars - Releasing May 29, 2009

  Posted 05/26/2009 by BrentJS

  Related: Sam Raimi | Ivan Raimi | Alison Lohman

• New TV Spot for Drag Me to Hell, Raimi and Cast Take the Horror Personally in Featurette

  Although the new TV spot for Drag Me to Hell is mostly review-quote driven, it does open with a nice extended version of the seance sequence from the trailer in which those assembled chant, "I welcome the dead into my soul." A fair enough omen for all sorts of horrific invasions to come.

  The cast and director dig deeper into the horror in a featurette over at Shock Till You Drop. Alison Lohman confesses that, like her character in the movie, she really would kill a kitten to survive. Justin Long professes his love for the performance director Sam Raimi managed to tease out of the maggots and the fly. And Raimi, himself, explains how he tried to incorporate what he has learned about characterization in his work outside the genre to make his return to horror that much more personal.

  
  

  Posted 05/26/2009 by Bill

  Related: Justin Long | Sam Raimi | Alison Lohman | Drag Me to Hell

Monday, May 25

• Sam Raimi Defends Drag Me to Hell's PG-13 Rating

  

  Today's generation of moviegoers is likely only familiar with the films of Sam Raimi that deal with a certain wall-crawling hero named Spider-Man. However, Raimi's origins in film are somewhat ... darker than the adventures of Peter Parker. Raimi dropped out of college in 1981 to film The Evil Dead, which effectively launched his career.

  It's been seventeen years since Raimi took a turn at the genre that began it all, but many of his fans are disappointed by the PG-13 rating on his latest contribution to horror, Drag Me to Hell. Raimi defended the rating in a recent interview, saying:

  ...those are just letters that people have prejudices about. It's not about the rating; it's about the intent of the film. If people want to see a blood-and-guts picture, this will not satisfy them and they should see an R. In fact, why not an X-rated or unrated film? R is for wussies if you're talking about blood and guts.

  Drag Me to Hell stars Alison Lohman as Christine Brown, a loan officer who angers a hell-dwelling demon by refusing to grant an elderly woman a mortgage extension.

  
  
  

  Reelz Clip

  Alison Lohman Stars - Releasing May 29, 2009

  Posted 05/25/2009 by BrentJS

  Related: Sam Raimi | Alison Lohman | The Evil Dead | Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn | Army of Darkness: Evil Dead 3

Wednesday, May 20

• In Gamer's Future, Lohman Says 'Everything's Debaucherous'

  Alison Lohman took a little time out from promoting Drag Me to Hell to talk to Sci-Fi Wire about her role in the upcoming dystopian action flick Gamer. In Gamer's vision of the future, video games have evolved to the point that players manipulate actual people in life and death combat. Lohman plays Trace, a member of the resistance who attempts to get death row inmate turned top cyber-gladiator Kable (Gerard Butler) back to his family. The world in which this all takes place is a plausible future, she contends, but not a happy one:

  "It's not a pretty world. It's chaotic. Everything's debaucherous."

  As for the movie itself, she apparently didn't start out with the highest of expectations. Working with directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor turned her around though, and she found herself impressed with the result. "It turned out better than I expected, to be honest," she says.

  
  

  Posted 05/20/2009 by Bill

  Related: Brian Taylor | Mark Neveldine | Alison Lohman | Gamer

Tuesday, May 19

• The Curse, the Skeptic, and More Shadows in Drag Me to Hell Clips

  The first step on the road to Hell, as we can see in the first of three new clips from Drag Me to Hell, is getting dragged out of your car by an enraged old gypsy woman (Lorna Raver). Locking the door is no help as she smashes through the window to exact her revenge. And all this before the curse on loan officer Alison Lohman really even gets started.

  In the second clip, we get a little comic relief with the first look at how the cursed loan officer's skeptical boyfriend, professor Clay Dalton (Justin Long), reacts to being dragged to a seer to figure out how to lift the curse.

  In the third, locked doors once again provide little protection. This time from the menacing shadows of hands that infiltrate from below. Such shadows were also central in an earlier clip, so it looks like this will be one of the demon's favored manifestations.

  
  

  Posted 05/19/2009 by Bill

  Related: Justin Long | Alison Lohman | Lorna Raver | Drag Me to Hell

Sunday, May 17

• Drag Me to Hell Stars Talk Banks and Evil

  Drag Me to Hell started filming last year before the financial crisis really took hold, but in interviews with Fearnet, the stars of the movie had some fun playing with the implications of its timely release.

  Having overheard a conversation about it in her bank, Alison Lohman concludes, "All bankers are talking about this movie." And asked whether she could be considered the hero for putting a curse on a loan officer, Lorna Raver replies "Absolutely." Another cast member, Octavia Spencer, goes even further. "All evil starts with banking," she proclaims with as much of a straight face as she can muster.

  
  

  Posted 05/17/2009 by Bill

  Related: Alison Lohman | Octavia L. Spencer | Lorna Raver | Drag Me to Hell

Thursday, May 14

• Shadows and a Fly in New Clips from Drag Me to Hell

  Most of the terror is in the build up and anticipation in two new clips for Sam Raimi's Drag Me to Hell. But when the horror finally does materialize, it packs a pretty good punch too.

  In the first clip, fear is in the wind for Christine Brown (Alison Lohman). Doors slam, windows blow open and the innocent shadows of branches coalesce into a demonic face on the wall. Then things start to get a little more physical.

  In the second, we get an agonizingly extended look at how thoroughly a peaceful sleep can get disrupted by one persistent fly with no sense of boundaries. A glimpse of this was featured in the TV spots released earlier. This is one case though where appreciation of the horror really is enhanced by dragging it out a bit.

  
  

  Posted 05/14/2009 by Bill

  Related: Sam Raimi | Alison Lohman | Drag Me to Hell

Wednesday, May 13

• Sam Raimi on Dragging Alison Lohman to Hell

  Legendary curse or urban legend? Neither, says director Sam Raimi in an interview with Movies Online. The details of Drag Me to Hell are, he confesses, "complete fabrication." But the story behind it is a classic morality play:

  What we really have at the core here is a timeless story concept ... the idea of a character that commits a sin of greed and has to pay the terrible price for it.

  In this case, it's a bank loan officer who is willing to throw an old woman out of her home. Certainly a familiar enough theme nowadays. But to make the movie really resonate with audiences, he wanted to create a morally bankrupt character that he could, nonetheless, get the audience to identify with. Enter Alison Lohman. Raimi thinks she did a brilliant job, but he has qualms of his own about what he had to do to her along the way.

  I had to do some pretty awful things to her. I mean, I choked her all the time with that old lady character played by Lorna Raver, grabbing her by the throat. I threw her out of a car, threw fake candy-glass at her, put her in a harness and whipped her around a room for hours on end, buried her alive under 800 pounds of mud. And that was just the first week.

  He explains that he wanted to tell her in advance what she would be facing, but he couldn't tell her everything because he was afraid she wouldn't take the part.

  
  
  

  Drag Me to Hell - Trailer

  Alison Lohman Stars - Releasing May 29, 2009

  Posted 05/13/2009 by Bill

  Related: Sam Raimi | Alison Lohman | Drag Me to Hell

Wednesday, May 6

• New TV Spots for Drag Me to Hell Play Havoc with the Digestion

  When your day starts out with a fly crawling up your nose, it's not a good omen. And indeed the horrors keep coming for the cast of Sam Raimi's Drag Me to Hell.

  A pair of fast-paced TV spots have been released, carrying the tagline "Even Nice People Can Go to Hell." Here's the first one, which offers a montage of some of the very unsettling experiences visited upon the unfortunate young loan officer (Alison Lohman) who ends up foreclosing on the home of the wrong old gypsy woman (Lorna Raver).

  
  

  Posted 05/06/2009 by Bill

  Related: Sam Raimi | Alison Lohman | Lorna Raver | Drag Me to Hell

Thursday, January 29

• Early Reviews of Drag Me to Hell, But Still No Official Trailer

  Sam Raimi's long-awaited return to horror, Drag Me to Hell, has been subject to some reviews, based on an early Los Angeles screening of the movie in unfinished form, and many found the Spider-Man director's return inspired. One review hailed it as "quite simply the most PERFECT horror film I've seen in a long, long while," and another claims that "Raimi has returned to true form."

  The movie, written by Raimi and his brother Ivan, follows a loan officer (Alison Lohman) that is cursed by an evil, elderly gypsy and finds her life turned into a living, um, hell. For even more opinions of the movie, head here.

  No trailer exists yet for the movie, so keep checking ReelzChannel for more updates.

  
  
  Next Showing: Drag Me to Hell opens May 29

  Posted 01/29/2009 by Ryan

  Related: Sam Raimi | Ivan Raimi | Alison Lohman | Drag Me to Hell

Tuesday, March 4

• Lohman taking Page's place in Hell

  Alison Lohman, last seen in Beowulf as the Nordic monster-slayer's jailbait wife, has signed on to star in Drag Me to Hell, the first post-Spider-Man project from director Sam Raimi. According to Variety, Lohman will take the place of Juno's Ellen Page, who departed the supernatural thriller just a few days ago because of those ever-pesky "scheduling issues."

  Drag Me to Hell represents Raimi's return to the genre that made him famous after taking a lengthy detour to make the three Spider-Man movies, which I'm told were somewhat successful. The script was co-written by Sam and his brother Ivan.

  Source: Variety

  
  

  Posted 03/04/2008 by reelz

  Related: Ellen Page | Sam Raimi | Alison Lohman | Drag Me to Hell