Film:Evil Dead
Release Date:April 5
Studio:Ghost House Pictures
Grade:B-
The remake to the 1981 film Evil Dead - titled, once again, Evil Dead - leaves audiences squirming in their seats from horrific violence and grotesque sexual content.
The 1981 version of the film is a cult classic for horror movie fans around the world. In addition to two sequels to the original, Evil Dead has inspired countless comic books, videogames and a musical. For many fans, the original film sets a fairly high bar for any horror movie made after its release.
Director Fede Alvarez makes his feature-length film debut with the fourth installment in the Evil Dead franchise. Sam Raimi (Oz the Great and Powerful), director of the original Evil Dead, specifically chose Alvarez to direct the remake after years of planning with actor Bruce Campbell (Oz the Great and Powerful), who played the lead role in the original three Evil Dead films.
Audience members should take the newest addition to the franchise with a grain of salt. The film does not aim to rework the characters, story line or plot development. The newest Evil Dead asks audiences to look at the film as a sequel: a group of 20-something-year-olds finds the same haunted book in the same cabin from the original film some odd years later.
The film revolves around Mia (Jane Levy, Fun Size), who struggles with a heroin addiction. She and a group of friends visit her family's cottage where she is reunited with her brother David (Shiloh Fernandez, The East).
After attempting to clean and fix the cottage, they find a strange, bound book with a warning against reading it. In classic horror movie form, someone has to ignore the warning.David's friend Eric (Lou Taylor Pucci, All Together Now) brims with curiosity and reads the book aloud, unleashing a demonic power into the ether.
After succumbing to heroin withdrawal, Mia attempts to run away from the cottage, only to be attacked and raped by the demon. The demon possesses Mia and forces her to attack her friends and brother.
There are some definite differences between the 1981 and 2013 versions of the Evil Dead. For instance, the special effects in the newest film create a more believable and frightening experience than the original.
There is an obvious technical transition from the original film presented in the effects used to scare audiences. Green-dyed creamed corn as zombie guts isn't going to cut it anymore when trying to scare a modern audience, like in the original. Alvarez intensifies the gore, amps up the music and rains down the blood to terrify the audience.
Levy's imitation of an emotionally tormented and struggling drug addict was played to perfection,and her performance only got better when reverting to the possessed Mia shouting obscenities and crawling around in blood and filth.
It's one thing to play the bumbling broad running away from a man with a chainsaw, but it's way more impressive to play the sickening, demonic version of a character the audience has already connected to.
As for Fernandez and Pucci, both of their performances were lacking.
Understandably, it's difficult to play a terrified character in a believable way, but both Fernandez and Pucci had audience members laughing in scenes where the response may not have been intended or appropriate.
True horror movie fanatics will notice certain directorial choices paid as homage to Raimi and other horror movie directors.
Each weapon used to kill someone was shot with a close up or prevalence in order to foreshadow its importance later in the film. For example, the electric knife was filmed carving a large piece of meat from the knife's point of view,teasing the audience with the question: "How is that going to be used later?"
Raimi, who has a flair for perspective shots, inspired many of the gore-action scenes filmed from the perspective of inanimate objects in the room or weapons being used.
The biggest problem the movie had was its inaccurate portrayal of how the human body responds to trauma. Characters used duct tape to cover up bullet holes and stab wounds. They are beaten, shot, stabbed, cut and suffer from other forms of brutalization, yet the characters walk away from everything almost unscathed. When David is shot in the arm, he still possesses full mobility and strength throughout the rest of the film.
The most distracting example of characters surviving trauma came when Mia ripped her hand off after it was stuck underneath a truck. No matter how amped up on adrenaline one may be, that's probably going to hurt, and an audible response is expected. No such response was given from the actress, yet she limped away after being cut on the knee by a machete.
In addition to an intense stream of gore and blood, the film had an exceptional score underlying the action. Low tones accompanied the film emotionally, but they became slightly predictable during stressful moments. Regardless, Roque Ba?+/-os (Alfred y Anna) composed a powerful score that helped to propel the movie.
For any fan of the original Evil Dead films, this addition should not be missed.
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