Evil Dead

Before I begin, I find necessary to explain my relationship with Sam Raimi’s original Evil Dead trilogy. The first one is a very decent serious horror movie that today suffers from its low budget and poor (though good at the time) effects and make-up. The second one, with its exaggerated comedy is beyond me, and Army of Darkness, well, that one’s a joke already. In short, to me the original Evil Dead doesn’t have that cult status, which might be one of the reasons why I liked the new version so much. In any case, I refused to look forward to the remake at first because I was expecting something like the new Nightmare on Elm Street, i.e. a generic and sterile commercial product that’s only exploiting a known brand. But the intense and exceptionally good trailers convinced me (and also a lot of people who otherwise only watch horror once a year or so, and who now are complaining about the excessive brutality – quite a paradox). And well, the truth is that the film is exactly what the trailers promised: a brutal, intense and dirty horror ride that has no recent competition in the cinemas (which actually isn’t too hard, when the most serious competitor in modern gore horror is weak stuff like The Collection). But Evil Dead is not only violent and bloody carnage, it’s also dominated by a bleak and depressive atmosphere, basically from the very first minute. We meet the characters already in the middle of a depressive forest, which we don’t leave until the end. It has incredible pace, it’s intense – for me it was the most fun I had at the cinema in the last year (maybe with the exception of Tarantino’s Django). Script-wise, it’s nothing original, of course – what can you really expect from the premise of “students in a cabin in the forest” a year after Cabin in the Woods? It’s better to bet on a classic and give fans exactly what they want. My only complaint is about the characters, in particular one of them. Natalie is introduced in the first minutes and we don’t see her again for about half an hour (and there are only 5 characters!), after which she takes on that world very effectively. But it’s not a big enough problem to take away one star, because otherwise, the new Evil Dead is precisely what I expected from it. It’s just what I wanted and my congratulations to Alvarez for his work. And I also congratulate all the viewers who appreciate his enthusiasm as a fan (minor script problems notwithstanding). For the rest of the public, we are probably twisted and amoral beings who don’t understand art. But we should come to terms with it already :) PS: To close, I’m adding a quote from the review in “Bloody Disgusting”, with which I fully agree: "This is your Avengers, this is your Avatar, this is whatever you’ve been wanting a ‘big’ horror movie to be for over a decade. Not a perfect movie, but a near perfect experience." (04/04/2013)

After watching the movie, I thought about how I would evaluate it. Surely, I can’t rate it higher than the original. But I gave that one a single star just for the brutality of it. I admit that I was a bit too harsh back then. Now I know that the brutal irony of the original deserved at least two stars, because it was missing in this movie and so it was just a brutal flop. So brutal, in fact, that they must have used hectoliters of fake blood. I think that Alvarez did a solid job, and a true horror fan must be really excited. It’s just a shame that they wanted the remake to be so different from the original that it ended up just as a pretty disgusting horror movie with actors who have stubs for arms and legs and surprisingly, they last longer than any of us could ever imagine. (16/03/2014)

The original Evil Dead is an unsurpassed classic, yet I have to give the creators of this remake a cautious salute for the very bloody ending and the genuinely creepy atmosphere in places. It's kind of the modern viewer’s consumable material, but definitely at the better end of the spectrum. I appreciate the direct references to Raimi's Evil Dead! [60%] (13/04/2021)

Well... Nothing new under the sun. Nothing good either. There's suspense in only about two scenes (Natalie going to get sugar and water, the final hiding), otherwise it’s more or less boring, disgusting things that aren't really disgusting because they get old right away, and the promising idea with the rehab is brought down by the stupid behavior of everyone - the living, the dead and the half-dead. (08/07/2014)

Great potential undermined by low IQ. The film’s characters repeatedly behave like naive idiots and deal with situations by taking unreasonable steps, just like in the worst horror B-movies. However, plenty of positives outweigh this shortcoming (literally): violence, blood and gore are deliciously elaborated, many scenes are very intense even for hardened horror fans, the pace of the film is killing (!), the bloody rain in the climax is impressive and the siren sound, subconsciously causing panic in the audience, is just perfect. One of the better remakes of the horror classics we grew up with. (09/04/2013)