So the look you responded to - that orgasmic quality - probably came from our wanting to suggest that even if this woman is being grabbed by a demon from the underworld, you could still have a good time watching the movie.’ ‘But we did set out to find a look that wasn’t simply one of a terrorized and tortured woman. OK, but what about the orgasmic look on her face? Was that a conscious choice? ‘We didn’t set out to do that, to put a sexual look on her face,’ Fogelson says. I wouldn’t want my 5-year-old seeing our poster and being disturbed by the images, so we’re always careful about how things look.’ She couldn’t appear to be choked or hurt or tortured, so we had to stay away from any terrifying images that would make the film appear to be a brutal experience. They couldn’t be around her neck or digging into her. The MPAA was very concerned about where the hands were placed. ‘After you do a thousand one-sheets, you pretty much know that certain things are off limits. ‘This is where you have a marriage of art and MPAA guidance,’ Fogelson says. As it turns out, this was as much the result of MPAA restrictions as any conscious artistic choice by Cold Open, the vendor Universal hired to help execute the poster design. One of the poster images that reinforced the idea of ecstasy is the way the gold-flecked hands reaching up from the underworld aren’t clawing or strangling Lohman - if anything, they appear to be gently caressing her, with one hand around her shoulder, one hand lightly touching her necklace. We wanted to stay away from that as much as possible.’ There have been a lot of print images lately for woman-in-jeopardy films that just felt too gross and unpleasant.’ He searched for the right word: ‘Icky. ‘We wanted to communicate the concept in a way that was exciting and scary, but also fun. To hear Adam Fogelson, Universal’s head of marketing and distribution, tell it, the main idea behind the poster was to distance ‘Drag Me to Hell’ from the grisly torture porn films that have largely dominated the horror genre in recent years. So is this what Universal was going for? Was sex really a big part of the equation? Keep reading: If it conveys anything, it’s saying, ‘If this is how I look when I go to hell, it couldn’t be so bad.’ ‘
#DRAG ME TO HELL POSTERS MOVIE#
‘It doesn’t feel like a cheesy slasher movie and with her perfect highlights, doesn’t look like the typical horror movie tramp scuzzbag.
‘It’s much more upscale,’ Press explains. Press also pointed out that what made the poster so striking was the absence of any of the cliched images that usually accompany horror films - no axes, saws or weapons of gore. The way she looks in that poster, the title might as well be ‘Drag Me Into Your Bedroom.’ ‘ I’d say it dials a lot more on the orgasmic side than on the horror side, which is exactly why it’s so provocative. With that expression on her face, it looks like she’s having a good time. Worried that I might be reading too much into this, I called Terry Press, a marketing consultant who in her days as head of marketing at DreamWorks did some great posters for such horror films as ‘The Ring’ and ‘What Lies Beneath.’ Did she see what I saw? ‘Of course,’ she said. The longer you stare, the more you wondered: If this is a horror film where she’s supposed to be scared, why is it that she also appears sexually aroused? Take a long look: Instead of appearing fearful, her eyes are closed, her mouth is open wide, her head is thrown back, as if she were - ahem - in some sort of ecstasy, if not in a purely erotic manner, then in a ‘I Am Woman! Hear Me Roar!’ kind of way.
But what really grabs your attention is her expression. Her hair shimmers with bright blond highlights. For starters, Lohman is dressed as if she were going out club hopping, wearing chic earrings, a black leather jacket and a silver necklace.
(‘Christine Brown has a good job, a great boyfriend and a bright future,’ its tagline says, ‘But in three days, she’s going to hell.’)īut the longer I stared at the image, the more convinced I was that the poster contained a hidden, more tantalizing message. The poster ostensibly offers up the riveting image of a young woman (played in the film by Allison Lohman) in the clutches of a multi-armed beast from the underworld, presumably dragging her off to its hellish lair. The other day I found myself staring at a row of ‘Drag Me to Hell’ posters slapped on the side of a construction site in my neighborhood.
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