In honor of the new EVIL DEAD being released today, lets talk about some classic good old fashioned... Remake? yeah yeah i know remakes are usually some of cinemas greatest sins,
Raimi and Campbell had planned a remake for many years, but, in 2009, Campbell stated the proposed remake was going nowhere and had "fizzled" due to extremely negative fan reaction. However in April 2011, Bruce Campbell stated in an AskMeAnything interview on Reddit "We are remaking Evil Dead. The script is awesome ..." The remake's gonna kick some ass — you have my word." Fede Álvarez and Rodo Sayagues co-wrote the script, which was then doctored by Diablo Cody in an effort to Americanize the dialogue, and thus EVIL DEAD 2013 was born. And thank go Bruce meant what he said.
Mia (Jane Levy), a drug addict, is determined to kick the habit. To that end, she asks her brother, David, his girlfriend, Natalie and their friends Olivia and Eric to accompany her to their family's remote forest cabin to help her through withdrawal. Eric finds a mysterious Book of the Dead at the cabin and reads aloud from it, awakening an ancient demon. All hell breaks loose when the malevolent entity possesses Mia.
This movie rules in every possible way. instead of the bare minimum characters and motivation of the first movie, this movies characters are all strong as hell with a valid motivation for staying at the cabin. The only exception is Natalie who could essentially be played by a cardboard cut out, but everyone else involved is giving it 110% and it shows. Jane Levy as Mia is a kick ass final girl, and without her this movie might not work at all. she is the most scared human being i have ever seen in a movie, and she really nails the atmosphere of total terror. the biggest change to this movie however isn't the characters or the plot, its all about the tone. the first EVIL DEAD was a campy b movie that got more laughs than scares, this movie is out to scare the absolute shit out of you.
the first movies ultra-violence never felt scary to me due to how obviously fake it looked, but this movie has no such luxury. Every second of violence and gore looks 100% real to the untrained eye, and the new deadites are humorless fuckers that want to make you suffer as much as possible. no cabin wide case of the giggles, no severed hand flipping you the bird, and no dead girlfriend dance numbers. just the low and slow sound of somebody sawing there face off with a shard of glass. its the kind of nasty gore that will have veteran horror fans peeking through there fingers, and no matter how many times i have seen this movie i cant help but cringe at its nastiness.
You know what else i love? a movie that understands how terrifying a single gun can be. much like death itself, you see a lot of movies with hundreds of weapons racking up hundreds of kills. you become desensitized to it after a while, so i love seeing the impact of a death or gun in a movie. a healthy respect of firearms and death is essential to the horror fan way of life, and i love that movie that understand that
Long live the EVIL DEAD, and may we be continually blessed with incredible remakes like this one
10 forked tonged French kisses/10
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