Evil Dead
Honestly, if this is the type of film we can expect if Sam Raimi ever gets “Evil Dead 4” up and running, count me out.
Now, that isn’t to say that co-writer/director Fede Alvarez’s take on Raimi’s horror classic isn’t without merit; aside from the technical skill, Alvarez also surprised me with a third act that actually made up for a lot of the ground the first 2/3s of the film lost. However, this new version of “Evil Dead” left me uneasy by how thoroughly it seemed to be influenced by the “torture porn” style gore we’ve been inundated with the past several years since “Saw” came out. Don’t get me wrong– I can handle bloody, and Alvarez, guided by Raimi, makes an “Evil Dead” movie every bit as bloody as I expect with a movie bearing that title. Unfortunately, the violence in the movie felt less like the imaginative absurdity Raimi delivered in his original “Dead” films, and more like an entry in the aforementioned “Saw” franchise, only set at a cabin.
The premise behind “Evil Dead” should be well-known to genre fans: five friends go up to a cabin in the woods, isolated by wilderness. They go rummaging around, when one of them comes across the “Book of the Dead.” Like a dunderhead, someone reads passages out of the book, unleashing a dark force that picks them off, one-by-one, eating their souls, trying to become flesh once more. This one adds a subplot about Mya (the main character, played by Jane Levy), who is trying to kick a heroin addiction (the trip to the cabin is an intervention), but the basic throughline of the screenplay by Alvarez and Rodo Sayagues is similar to the one Raimi followed in both his 1981 original, and infamous 1987 sequel/remake, films.
As I mentioned earlier, there is tremendous technical skill involved with bringing this new vision of an old classic to life, and I must say, I’m pleasantly surprised by how “new” this film feels, even if it does find places for famous moments from the original films. And there’s some decent acting turned in by some of the actors, especially Levy. In the end, however, I just didn’t enjoy the film. It lacks the goofy charm of Bruce Campbell’s Ash; the madcap, stop-motion effects that helped bring the terror to life in the first two films; and honestly, it was just too visceral in its violence to be an “entertaining” horror movie. I felt like I was being punished for something, and despite the superb, PG-13 horror ride that was his 2009 film, “Drag Me to Hell,” Raimi seems to have lost his way when it comes to scaring me shitless, even as he puts a smile on my face. WTF, man?!
