Title: Evil Dead
Year: 2013
Country of Origin: US
Director: Fede Alvarez
Plot: Looks like Mia picked the wrong week to quit shooting heroin.
Review: So yeah, lets talk about ducks. You know the birds that floats on water and quacks. There is a pretty good idiom about ducks; if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck...then it's a duck. So lets take what we just learned and apply it to Evil Dead. It sort of looks like Evil Dead, it sort of walks like Evil Dead, but does it quack like Evil Dead?
Yes...yes it does.
The film introduces us to a whole new cast of characters who head out to a cabin in the woods. Like the original film, things go sideways when some idiot decides to read a passage from a book that is bound in skin. Oh and in this one, when they find the book it is wrapped in barbed wire and written on its pages are warnings pleading with the reader not anything out loud. What follows is sort of a remix of the first two movies. Arms are cut off, trees rape, someone gets locked in the cellar, demons threaten to swallow souls. You, know the basic things we've come to expect the Evil Dead series.
Where the film differs, and where I'd say it falters is how it structures its scares. Here is an example, one member of the party goes off on her own. She sees two things that tell us what's about to happen with her. We see an image in a mirror and we see the necronomicon flip to a page that shows exactaly whats going to happen to her. So it's not really all that shocking or scary when she gets Possessed and and begins to
. In fact, most of the scares in the movie are telegraphed well before they happen. I have to say, it's the ending that really makes the film. It goes for broke and it manages to pull of a crazy, gory and fun finale.
Some die hard fans probably wont like this one. It lacks the comical tone Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness. It doesn't have that cheesy budget feel, there aren't any memorable catch phrases or any Bruce Campbell. If you're looking for that, Sam Raimi's
Drag Me to Hell will probably more up your alley, a move that I've been calling Evil Dead 4 for a while now. But for anyone who remembers the first film, where Ash is a total wus and the only comedy comes from the bad acting and over the top violence; then you might be a little more forgiving.
For me though, this is solid remake, that manages to hit all the right marks. Sure, it's not perfect, but it's better than what I thought it was going to be.
[7/10]
