Running Length:
Rated: R (Violence, Profanity)
Cast: Jane Levy,
Director: Fede Alvarez
Screenplay: Fede Alvarez, based on the screenplay by Sam Raimi
Perhaps I stacked the decks too far against 2013's Evil Dead remake prior to going into it but the night before I sat down with my Blu-Ray copy of the original 1981 horror classic The Evil Dead and had 85 minutes of pure gleeful gross-out fun. Watching the remake in close proximity to the original has allowed me to see what worked in the low budget original that was completely done wrong this time around and for that I am not repentant for going into it the way that I did.
The basic story has not changed from the original film although the further into the film you go the more it starts to deviate from it. There are five people. three girls and two guys, going out to a cabin in the woods for some time away from the world. This time around there is an actual reason given for this trip: Mia (Jane Levy) has recently had an overdose on drugs and has sought the help of her friends to detox in an environment where she won't have access to her drug of choice. Along for the ride are her estranged brother, David (Shiloh Fernandez), his girlfriend, Natalie (Elizabeth Blackmore), registered nurse Olivia (Jessica Lucas), and high school teacher Eric (Lou Taylor Pucci). A dog named Grandpa has been added to the mix but otherwise this is the same set-up that graced the original.
Shortly after arriving at the cabin Grandpa discovers a blood soaked trap door to the cellar which leads to a bunch of dead cats (this is never really explained, unfortunately) and a book wrapped up in barb wire. Eric foolishly cuts the wire, ignores the scrawls that tell him not to read it, and unleashes a demon bent on killing them all and swallowing their souls.
The film doesn't take too long to get going which is a good thing because there isn't a character among these leads worth rooting for. They are all as dimensional as the cut-out cardboard images posted inside the theatre lobby. A couple of them are a little more interesting, primarily Mia and her brother David, but their back story is glossed over and relegated to a couple of brief scenes about how he was never there for her or their family. It is mentioned several times but never given enough attention to really mean anything other than that it happened. Likewise Mia is given her drug addiction which only serves to keep those around her from believing what is going on to her at first because it is easier to believe that it is all a part of the withdrawal symptoms of her drug use. It is a convenience to get these characters to this locale and keep them in doubt for the first part of the film. It in no way comes back later in the film and appears to actually get dropped by the later parts.
In the original film it became obvious early on who was going to be the one audiences were to root for. In most cases this is the virginal woman who is destined to run around screaming while all others around her get killed one after the other. The Evil Dead (1981) gave us Ash (Bruce Campbell), a man driven to kill all those around him as they, one after another, became possessed and homicidal. David plays this part in the new film but with a twist I will not reveal in this review. I will say that the film takes a dramatic shift in focus late in the proceedings that will take fans of the original film by surprise. This shift is at once abrupt and more than a little disorienting. It is also a necessary departure from the original that makes it its own beast.
There has been a trend in the last decade or so to sanitize the horror genre, remaking foreign horror films and watering them down to a PG-13 and thus watering down the scares. Evil Dead does not fall into that pitfall. Instead it goes in the opposite direction and ramps up the gore and violence into the realm of torture porn. It not only goes over the top in the gore but it doesn't rely on CGI to portray it. The effects are practical and it shows. This is old school horror ramped up a few notches.
There are a few things that keep this film from being the rollicking good time the original is. The characters are bland, although that was also the case in the original. The primary issue is the lack of focus that keeps us from really getting into the scenario. There is a prologue to the film that is new for this version. It gives us some back story that is never delved into again and is pretty much dropped by the time the rest of the story comes along. There is also the thing about the cats I mentioned before that seem to only be there to make things creepy. The timeline for the prologue is also left unexplained. It has to be recent because of the leftover stench of the decaying cats and burnt bodies but that is left for us to puzzle out and is never addressed.
Remakes are a difficult thing to get right. Remakes of classics are even worse. Fans of the original film will undoubtedly go see it for the experience and then be left disappointed if it doesn't live up to the original. That is the case here. There are more than enough things to make this film worth seeking out if brutal horror films are to your liking. However, gone is the humor and subtlety that made the first film a classic that still enjoys an ardent following more than thirty years later. This film does not have that type of staying power and is destined to be an interesting side note in reference to The Evil Dead series, nothing more.
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