Evil Dead (2013)

The Suburgatory finale took a strange turn...

Directed By: Fede Alvarez

Written By: Fede Alvarez, Rodo Sayagues

Starring: Jane Levy, Shiloh Fernandez, Lou Taylor Pucci, Jessica Lucas

*Spoilers!*

Fede Alvarez made a bit of a splash with the short film ‘Panic Attack’ a few years ago. He ended up in talks with Sam Raimi to make a movie but it fell apart and they decided to remake ‘The Evil Dead, the Ultimate Experience in Grueling Horror’ instead.

The movie starts off pretty interestingly, with Jane Levy playing a heroin addict who is going with her friends and brother to a cabin in the woods to go cold turkey. That’s pretty cool because when she starts freaking out and saying she wants to go home they’ll think it’s just the withdrawal and she just thinks she sees dead babies crawling on the ceiling or whatever. It’s abandoned pretty quickly though and so is all the character dynamics (I think one of the guys has a problem with the brother or something but it’s only mentioned once.) Then it just starts going from gore scene to gore scene.

The first one is easily the most problematic. It’s a recreation of the tree rape scene. That was easily the worst part of the original and only a few years later Raimi was already saying he regretted putting it in. Apparently it was producer Robert G. Tapert that suggested putting it in the remake. What a prick. I think they try to soften it by involving a female spirit but it still shouldn’t have been put in at all.

The other gore scenes are technically well done and they use a lot of practical effects which is great and all but the scenes are all kind of dull. I re-watched the original recently and one thing that makes that work so well is the idea that ANYTHING can happen. There isn’t really any method to what the deadites are doing, they’re pretty much just fucking around. There’s more of a sense of escalation too, things seems to get crazier as it goes on. With the remake it’s just a character gets mutilated, then another gets mutilated and then another gets mutilated. It’s made worse by the fact that they keep cutting to images in the book depicting everything that is happening. Is the implication that there is a set list of mutilations and even an order they have to be done in? What? Why? Is there a boss deadite somewhere trying to meet a quota or something? Actually there probably is because the book also says there has to be 5 souls for the main spirit to come and I guess he’s pretty picky.

It really only gets good right at the end when it starts straight up raining blood. I guess you have to try and top the amount of blood in ‘Dead Alive’ so they were like ‘Yeah, fuck it let’s just make it rain blood.” Red Letter Media had a theory that they only put in the bloody rain to get around the MPAA. Kill Bill had to have a scene in black and white because of how much blood was in it but in this they might get away with it because it’s impossible to tell how much is actually blood and how much is rain. Levy has also changed into a red dress for no reason at this point too so I guess it was so they could get away with spraying her with as much blood as possible without it becoming too obvious.

It was too little too late though. They are planning a sequel and also a sequel to Army of Darkness and there are hints that they might cross over too. I’m curious if they'll follow the original series and start moving into comedy. Looking back there’s something really crazy about that progression. I can’t imagine the makers of Saw or something being like “Okay the next one will be more of a comedy and the third one will be even more of a comedy and will have WAY less gore and way more Three Stooges stuff. Yep”.

Rating: Avoid