Evil Dead (2013) Review

Evil Dead (2013) Review

When it comes to horror movie remakes, taking something old and obscure and not that great to begin with (like My Bloody Valentine, for example) and doing it over again is relatively harmless. But when you take a beloved horror classic, there’s the potential to upset a lot of fans. It’s one thing to remake the first entry in a tired franchise, like Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Friday the 13^th, but the Evil Dead series was a special case. It only consisted of three films, all of which were acclaimed, so why remake it? 

I was skeptical of the Evil Dead remake from the beginning, but once I found out it was being produced and guided by the creators of the original, I started getting more hopeful. Then I got really hopeful when the first red band trailer came out; to this day, that rapidly-cut series of images is a frightening, effective, and accurate preview of what it’s all about. I saw it in the theater opening weekend, and was not at all disappointed. My opinion still stands, Evil Dead is a good remake, and a good modern horror movie. 

First of all, there are some key factors to consider when approaching a remake like this. 1) The effects have to be an improvement. Usually this isn’t a problem, but sometimes, terrible cgi is used in places where practical effects would still look better (Nightmare on Elm Street remake comes to mind). 2) The actors should be decent. No academy-award-winning performances needed, just believable, scared young adults. 3) Extreme gore and violence that tops whatever came before. In the case of Evil Dead, it was go all-out, or go home. And they went all-out. 

Evil Dead has some of the goriest scenes in any horror movie I can think of. Gone is the campy humour, which I did miss, but ultimately, to have retained it would have been a misstep. This Evil Dead goes for pure terror, the way the original intended. That’s what it’s all about, and it nails it right in the first scene. A girl is tied up in a cabin, surrounded by strange-looking folk, and her dad douses her with fuel and strikes a match, triggering the demon possessing her to come forth. She swears at him and threatens to rip his soul out. Now that’s how you start things off! 

Then we go to the kids arriving at the cabin, just like in the original, only this time, the motives are a bit different. They aren’t just here for a good time, their friend Mia is trying to get over her heroin addiction, which is a simple but logical change to the story. The isolation is meant to help her, and when things start going crazy, no one believes her because they think she’s just in withdrawal. If only that were it. One of the idiots reads from the book of the dead, which he found wrapped in barb wire (as if that wasn’t enough of a hint not to read it), but the effort he goes to in order to read from it is just too over-the-top to believe, making it one of the things I really don’t like in this movie. 

The acting is mostly all bad, which isn’t an improvement from the original, but not really a step down, either. What we needed was one main character to prevail toward the end, and for that character to be likable and badass. This time, it’s Mia, played by Jane Levy, who I think is a very underrated actress. It was wise not to recast the character of Ash, who should forever be played by Bruce Campbell. In fact, Ash isn’t in the movie at all (except an end credits teaser), this batch of kids is entirely new. Aside from a few minor story details, it’s everything we’ve seen before. The roving POV, the boom stick, the chainsaw, the deadites, the tree rape scene, it’s all there. And of course it is, it’s a remake; the main differences are in the details of violence, but also in the way the evil comes about.

The special effects are all mainly practical, and look great. There is tons of blood and gore and grime on everything, and the cinematography is excellent. Visually speaking, it’s a slicker-looking version of the original, with all the same elements, just dialled up and refined. In terms of topping the insane-levels of gore from previous movies, they manage to match it, and then surpass it. It’s not as playfully inventive, though, it’s more about being as brutal as possible, which works for the overall approach to the material. As far as criticisms go, I don’t have a lot beyond the bland characters and repeated elements of the other movies. Had the characters been more original, and played by better actors, it probably would have elevated it to being one of the best horror movies of the decade. 

Evil Dead is maybe not one of the best horror remakes of all-time, but it’s certainly a very good one. I still prefer the original any day, but if getting a remake is what we needed to have the original series continue, then fine by me, because they could have done a lot worse than this, and what came after was worth the wait.