Sam Raimi is going back to his horror roots with his next movie, directing a low(er than Spider-Man 3's) budget supernatural thriller he cowrote with brother Ivan way back in 1992, right after they wrote Army of Darkness. Called Drag Me To Hell, the film is about someone who gets cursed (The Curse was the original title back in 92). "Sam calls it a 'spook-a-blast,' a wild ride with all the chills and spills that 'Evil Dead' delivered, without relying on the excessive violence of that film," Raimi's producing partner Rob Tapert said. "When one has done three very expensive movies, they get used to eating caviar. Sam will have to ponder what it means to come down from the mountaintop for a moment."

Drag Me to Hell will be Raimi's first effort for Ghost House, the genre-oriented production company he and Tapert founded a couple of years ago and which has been steadily churning out mostly garbage. Judging by Tapert's description Drag Me To Hell sounds like yet another movie aimed at the babysitter crowd and hey, they need horror movies too. It's just going to be too bad if Raimi's genius for splatstick, reined in for years, doesn't get a chance to gallop back out in the great field of Three Stooges-influenced carnage. Tapert tells me to go fuck myself with my premature moaning about a PG-13 rated Sam Raimi horror movie: "The appeal to Sam on 'Drag Me to Hell' was returning to what he had once done and loved doing, which was entertaining a very specific group of fans and providing a roller coaster ride for them," Tapert said. "He doesn't have the enormous pressure here that goes with handling a hundreds of millions of dollars franchise."

What's interesting is that Raimi is plucking a script he wrote 15 years ago and I am assuming not doing a bit of editing on it. After all, there's a strike on, right? The film is scheduled to start shooting early next year, and he can't assume the strike will be over by then. I'm pretty curious about this whole thing.

But speaking of franchises, Variety seems to think that Raimi's a lock for The Hobbit. I think so too, although a lot of names are being thrown around right now. Obviously a lot can change between now and the start of those two films, but I'm interested in seeing Peter Jackson being the boss of Sam Raimi, the guy whose style influenced him beyond measure on his first few films. The student has become the master indeed.

JUNO IN HELL

* By Jeremy Smith
* Published 02/9/2008
* News
*

If Sam Raimi's long-awaited return to horror, Drag Me to Hell, is, as Rob Tapert classified it last December, "... a wild ride with all the chills and spills that Evil Dead delivered, without relying on the excessive violence of that film," then I'm going to assume he plans on torturing the living Ash out of his lead. Groovy. That he's chosen to cast a female in the Bruce Campbell role is interesting; that he's settled on Academy Award-nominee Ellen Page is the second greatest thing I've read all day (behind the Ricky Gervais/Matt Robinson screenplay for This Side of the Truth).

Raimi calls Drag Me to Hell a "spook-a-blast". I'd prefer an addition to the "spam in a cabin" genre, but anything that doesn't entail a bunch of folks with super powers begging each other's forgiveness is fine by me. Variety's Michael Fleming describes the film as a "morality tale about the unwitting recipient of a supernatural curse". Somehow, "spook-a-blast" is more specific. While Page is also attached to Drew Barrymore's roller derby flick, Whip It, Fleming claims that this will be her next movie (it's currently scheduled to begin production on March 17th out here in Los Angeles). You didn't need another reason to adore Page, but here you are.

Universal Pictures will finance and distribute Drag Me to Hell. If this is truly a down-and-dirty (in terms of scale) horror film, I wouldn't be surprised if it's ready for theaters before the end of the year.