Evil Dead (’13 review)

4 outta 5

The Evil Dead trilogy is actually one of the more inventive series out there because each take bounces into a different genre.  Evil Dead is an indie horror exploitation flick, Evil Dead 2 is a gore horror comedy and the third, Army of Darkness, is a slapstick horror medieval quest film.  Now there’s the remake of Evil Dead (but, if you squint, it can fit into the series continuity proper) which doesn’t smash genre like its predecessors but is a fairly decent instalment.  The original trilogy’s director Sam Raimi and star and Bruce Campbell are on board as producers so you can see a few of their touches.  As extreme as this movie gets it never really hits the inspired lunacy of the Raimi-helmed movies but sometimes it comes incredibly close. 

This Evil Dead opens with the grisly ending for a victim of possession and the sequence sets the stakes high, grabbing the audience’s attention.  Afterwards, the movie follows five young adults at a secluded cabin trying to help the heroin-addicted Mia (Jane Levy from “Suburgatory”) go cold turkey.  Her brother, David (Shiloh Fernandez) is concerned for her health and mental well-being while Mia’s friends Eric (Lou Taylor Pucci) and Olivia (Jessica Lucas) want to keep her locked up.  There’s also David’s girlfriend, Natalie (Elizabeth Blackmore) who doesn’t figure into the plot until the evil dead things start happening.  This begins when Eric finds a book of bizarre rituals about an otherworldly possessing presence.  In one of the stupider moments in the film, since the book is wrapped in barb wire and has literally “Do Not Read!” written across it, Eric starts making incantations.  It’s really hard to pull off a straightforward version of this type of movie after last year’s Cabin in the Woods gleefully blew it open and this Dead falls into a few plot contrivance trappings. Anyway, now a malicious spirit inhabits Mia, turning her a hideous deformed monster and soon the spirit is taking over other members of the cabin, causing them to murder each other in gory ways and giving them superhuman strength which makes stopping the evil dead a tad difficult. 

One wouldn’t call this movie an acting showcase, none of the cast have the gonzo physical craziness of Campbell’s Ash, but they are decent.  Blackmore has a few really freaky moments when she gets possessed and Levy gets to stretch and be really disturbing.   There is one solid beat with her and Fernandez near the end where the real Mia’s spirit shines through and it’s surprisingly effective.  It’s one of those rare things that can only happen in genre films where the chaos and horror preceding it accentuates the emotional tidbit.  More splatter immediately follows so it doesn’t get too mushy.     

Directed by Fede Alvarez there isn’t a lot of unwatchable shaky-cam that has dominated horror movies in the last decade.  Instead, he favours long, nicely composed shots that drip with dread like a bit where a possessed person drags a shotgun along the floor that looks quite creepy.  There are a few stylistic cribs from the Raimi films.  In those movies Ash had a tendency to cobble together various bits of machinery with Raimi using zoom-ins on items he selects.  That bit is repeated here but with a slight twist. An iconic sequence from Evil Dead 2 where Ash’s hand becomes bad is gleefully bizarre and played for gory laughs; here it’s recreated in a fairly horrific manner with a grizzly punch-line.  Another key visual motif is using a sped-up steady-cam to show the evil approaching but when it’s used this time it feels more like a shameless copy and paste.   

Foul-mouthed demonic possessions abound and what this movie does very well is bouncing back and forth between the confused human inside and the monster.  A bit with a possessed human using a nail gun is a jaw-dropper, quite worthy of the mad stamp of approval for this series, and the aftermath of the scene is riveting.  For anyone who has seen the first flick and know how they dealt with the evil book there is an interesting twist on that this time.  One sequence from the original involves a character having an uncomfortable encounter in the woods with some trees.  The tree attack happens again, not quite as explicit as its predecessor but still creepy.  What helped Raimi’s movie was the disorienting sound design with vocals that sounded downright otherworldly.  The voices are done this time with less ambient menace and more loudness. 

Remaking a horror classic like Evil Dead may seem sacrilege but it’s not without precedent.  Hell, the opening minutes of Evil Dead 2 are a remake of the original!  Some of the fun has been drained out this time around but it still has scares, buckets of gore, and liberal chainsaw usage. Provided you have a high tolerance for severed limbs, you will enjoy this movie.