Earlier this evening Bloody-Disgusting hit up the red carpet premiere of Universal Pictures’ Drag me to Hell, Sam Raimi’s triumphant return to horror. While the celebs were slim picking (there’s never enough time), we did manage to get an exclusive chat with Raimi before he ran in to introduce his latest creation. Beyond the break you can see what he was thinking in making Drag Me to Hell and how it’s rejuvenated his horror juices.
DRAG ME TO HELL follows a loan officer (Alison Lohman) who is ordered to evict an old woman from her home and finds herself the recipient of a supernatural curse that turns her life into a living hell. Desperate, she turns to a seer to try and save her soul, while evil forces work to push her to a breaking point.

When we grabbed Sam Raimi on the red carpet premiere here in Hollywood, we asked him if he felt the pressure from horror fans to deliver something good, and if he felt this was as important to the horror genre as a we feel it is. His only thought was that he really wants people to have a great time.

“ I hope it scares the audience, I hope they go in and have a good time,” he tells Bloody-Disgusting. “I want them to feel suspense, laugh at the things that at are supposed to be funny – tickle them. I hope they jump and scream!”

“When the audience has this electricity as a group, they’re really feeling the suspense and fear together,” Raimi explains of the experience of seeing a horror film with a group of strangers and how they become figuratively become “one”. “I felt that in some really good horror films, like when I saw John Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN for the first time, the whole audience was electrified with fear. They were all as one, all terrified and amplifying their fears one on to the next.”

DRAG ME TO HELL screams EVIL DEAD and feels like it could have easily been a spin-off. We asked Raimi why this over a new EVIL DEAD.

“I didn’t really make it instead of EVIL DEAD,” he explains. “I just had this story and turned it into a screenplay, I didn’t think about EVIL DEAD at all when making this film. It really was just about taking this story and pleasing the horror audience who has been really good to me and supported me and all the movies I made – horror and beyond. I wanted to make something they’d like, and I hope they will like.”

After so many years, Raimi talks about how filming a new horror film has rejuvenated his horror juices.

“It did remind me of how much I love horror movies. I love building horror suspense sequences. I love the craft as a storyteller of trying to be aware of where the audience is and what they’re expecting – sometimes giving it to them, sometimes giving them something else. I really enjoy playing that game with them…”

This one’s for you horror fiends! Check out Sam Raimi’s DRAG ME TO HELL in theaters May 29th from Universal Pictures.