For Roger Ebert, who inspired me to take these silly motion pictures seriously and who would have hated this movie.
(Courtesy MoviePosterDB.com)
Another day, another horror remake, and this isn’t “April Fool’s Day” or “Night of the Creeps.” This is a heavyweight. “The Evil Dead” is a genre-defining classic of cinema, and you are legally unable to consider yourself a true horror fan if you haven’t seen it.
So imagine the boohooing that accompanied the news that it was being remade. We hate the idea of these remakes, but we continue paying to see them. It’s a vicious cycle.
The plot of this “Evil Dead” (dropping the “The”) involves Mia, played by Jane Levy, who is a heroin addict and decides that spending a few nights in an ominous run-down cabin with her brother, David (Shiloh Fernandez), and some friends will help her kick the habit.
This gets us off to a much more dour and serious start than the original with its college kids just out for a good time.
The first 20 to 30 minutes give us plenty of time to learn that Levy and Fernandez can give awful readings of awful dialogue and to learn absolutely nothing about the other characters other than that one is a nurse, one is a high school teacher and one is a … blonde?
The original movie also had horrible actors saying horrible lines, so I have no reason to complain here. Besides, the good stuff is on its way.
The characters eventually find their way into the creepy cellar and discover a book. The Book of the Dead or the Necronomicon, to be exact. One of them is even silly enough to read from it, and we’re off to the races.
The thing that turned the negative of another horror remake into a positive for me was that “Evil Dead” manages to capture one of the things that made the original work so well: the fun. Director Fede Alvarez knows his audience and plays to it perfectly by delivering a gory roller coaster.
This is certainly the bloodiest movie I’ve seen in the theater in quite a while, but Alvarez, like Sam Raimi before him, realized that the purpose of these movies is for the viewer to be thrilled, chilled and mostly to have a good time — to be entertained.
Another major positive of “Evil Dead” is that most of the effects are practical, not CGI. I’ve made no secret of my hatred for CGI blood and gore, so this movie was like a breath of fresh air.
But is “Evil Dead” scary? Well, not really. It has some genuinely creepy moments but falls far short of the claims on the poster that it’s “The Most Terrifying Film You Will Ever Experience.” I was having such a good time that I didn’t mind, though.
Does “Evil Dead” effectively remake “The Evil Dead?” Well, it was actually never meant to be a remake so much as the next chapter in the “life” of The Book of the Dead.
It’s a movie that will satisfy old fans and new, and this “Evil Dead” deserves to be in the lofty company of the originals.
Groovy.
Josh Presley is a journalism senior. Follow him on Twitter @joshuapresley.
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