The Evil Dead that was made in 2013 is a soft reboot of sorts, with
help of the film being produced by Sam Rami and Bruce Campbell
themselves! The stars of the film are Jane Levy, Shiloh Fernandez,
Lou Taylor Pucci, and Jessica Lucas. The Director is Fede Alvarez,
and this was his first big directorial credit! He has also directed
Don’t Breathe, and The Girl in the Spider’s Web.
A
quick summary of the film is 5 friends go to a cabin in the middle of
the woods, to try to get their heads straight, the end of finding the
book of the dead, and unknowingly unleash demons, which in turns
means the 5 friends need to fight for their lives, and souls!
The
actors I think do a great job in the movie being unique, but at the
same time being unified in being scared, but it’s slow, at first
just one of them is terrified of what’s happening, but eventually
they all succumb to realizing they are in way over their heads.
Besides that, they all have their own wants and needs, desires, how
they feel, and aren’t just lead by the story to act or feel a
certain way. They also don’t
have any glaring weaknesses, or no one person is bringing the movie
down, really all the actors are conveying all the right moods and
social queues to bring this movie and world to life.
The demons are also fun, creepy, and
evil. They make you worry that something might pop up tonight on your
way to bed.
The
gore and special effects of the film are pretty excellent, gore
starting off as small as a little cute to it literally starts raining
blood in the film. People cut off limbs, catch fire, lose legs, it is
an incredibly graphic and gory movie, which is exactly how I like my
horror movies. The special effects are great too, while they mostly
deal with gore, the movie, while dark, is very beautiful, and
I enjoyed looking at the backgrounds when I could, but this movie
once it starts, won’t let up and is fairly fast paced.
The
story, while still mostly a remake of the original Evil Dead, and
even some parts of Evil Dead 2, is a much more “realistic” much
less campy funny and goofy film, and takes itself much more
seriously. I don’t think this is a bad thing necessarily, I think
this is a movie that wanted to focus solely
on taking what was creepy from the Evil Dead franchise, and cutting
away everything that doesn’t make it scary, and it did that. I
think it tried to turn the dials up as far as they could go without
getting an NC-17 rating, but still going as much as a no compromise
approach as they could with the film. Only
watching it once, I don’t think there are any giant plot holes or
anything. The movie was shot well, and lighting was
used to great effects to make the cabin and movie in genera, more
creepy.
The
Evil Dead remake from 2013 I think is an excellent horror movie that
I should of watched sooner. I was honestly going in thinking I’d
hate this movie, but what it’s really done is show that the
original movies had way more value to them than I had originally
thought, because I thought I just liked them so much for nostalgia
reasons.
I gladly give Evil Dead a 4/5 and hope that eventually a
sequel is made, it is great! Sadly it isn’t streaming anywhere at
the time of this writing, so you will have to bum this off a friend
or buy it to watch it!