“You will die! Like the others before you, one by one, we will take you!”
As a huge fan of the original Evil Dead films, I spent much of 2012 and early 2013 looking forward to the new film with both anticipation and trepidation. How do you remake such an iconic film? Having Sam Raimi, Rob Tapert, and Bruce Campbell on board as producers helped alleviate my concerns somewhat, but I still worried – what if it was awful? Or even worse, what if it was just mediocre? What if it bombed at the box office, killing any chance of future Evil Dead/Army of Darkness movies?
Man, I put a lot of baggage on this movie.
Regardless, I had planned on seeing it in the theater, preferably on opening night, hopefully with a bunch of other Evil Dead fans. And then, suddenly, I didn’t care about horror movies any more. I just hit a burnout point. For the first time in my life, I didn’t have any interest in horror. None. For me this was akin to suddenly getting bored with breathing, and it was traumatic and disconcerting to have such an integral part of my self-identity just be GONE. This went on for months and months – most of 2013, actually. So the release date for Evil Dead came and went, and I stayed home.
The burnout passed, thank goodness, and I got back into the swing of things in time for October 2013, but I’d missed Evil Dead. And I kept missing it. There always seemed to be something else to watch, some other movie I’d missed or wanted to see. It started to become a thing – when was I going to watch the remake of Evil Dead? I mean, the reviews were mixed, but not bad. And it sounded really gory, all done with practical effects – I mean, I love that stuff.
I did eventually see it, and I remember both enjoying it more than expected and being disappointed in aspects. I think this was Fede Álvarez’s first feature film, and it’s an amazing accomplishment for a first-time director. It just didn’t hit all the same buttons for me as the original.
Now I find myself in a similar situation with Evil Dead Rise. I somehow missed it when it was released, and I still haven’t gotten around to watching it. I’m hoping to do so soon, but in the meantime, I thought I should go back and rewatch this one while I was in the Evil Dead mood.
To get there, of course, I had to take a trip down…
The Medium
I have the 2013 DVD of Evil Dead. I somehow still haven’t gotten around to buying the Blu-ray, which is dumb. The cinematography is so good I think the Blu-ray would be worth it. Maybe eventually. The picture was fairly decent, although quick moving scenes had some substantial blur – not sure if that’s source material, the DVD or my television. There are a handful of extras, which I still appreciate on a DVD that’s not a special edition or anything. No commentary, though – that’s a Blu-ray exclusive. There’s also a 2022 4k release from Shout. For streaming, you can watch Evil Dead for free (with ads) on Tubi and it can be rented or purchased at the usual online vendors.
The Movie
Right off the bat, I’m torn. The opening sequence, in which a girl is chased through the woods, captured and taken to a horrific basement, is pretty riveting. It’s atmospheric, tense and really well shot. The confrontation between her and her father, the appearance of the Naturon Demonto, the deformed people – it’s all good horror stuff. It’s also a gut puncher, with fire and shotgun breaking familial bonds.
And yet… It’s exposition. It’s explanation. It shows how the Book gets in the basement (as well as all those dead cats). It’s well done – but I was a little annoyed. Yeah, there is an explanation in the earlier films – but I think the film might have been better without it. How much creepier would all that stuff be without explanation – burnt pillar, dead cats, book in plastic and barbed wire? Knowing something horrible happened, but not exactly what? Just letting us infer what happened from Eric’s reading of the book?
I got the feeling sometimes that Álvarez was uncertain of his audience’s ability to pay attention. There’s a moment when Eric (Lou Taylor Pucci) and David (Shiloh Fernandez) are exploring the basement and we first see the charred pillar. There’s a sudden flashback to the burning girl from the opening, and I was immediately annoyed again – WE KNOW what happened, you don’t have to remind us, it’s been like fifteen minutes. I got that same feeling several times, like the director was concerned that we’d forgotten things or gotten bored.
You know, I’m starting off with negative things, and I don’t want to give the impression that I didn’t like the film. I did, actually. I liked it a lot. For most of the movie I was enjoying things and impressed with the quality of the production and especially the effects – some of those gore set pieces are amazing. I still have no idea how they did that bit with the girl’s face.
In fact, for most of the initial setup I was pretty happy. There are nods to the original, but they’re not annoying. The ‘Classic’ is a wreck under a pile of leaves in the yard, for instance. There’s a sequence as the car arrives that includes a quick shot of the bench swing, and I expected the sound of it banging against the wall – and I was pleased when they didn’t do it. I liked that the setup was different – it’s a bunch of kids coming to the cabin to help their friend (and sister) go cold turkey from heroin. What a great way to ignore that character when she starts seeing/experiencing things! And all those lingering shots of things like knives, guns and chainsaws. The movie is winking at us a bit, because we know those things will be used against all too tender flesh later on.
And if the characters are a bit too flat, a bit too broad? It’s okay – at least I can tell them apart, as opposed to some recent horror films. And Jane Levy as Mia is pretty good, if a little annoying – but I think that’s intentional. The group as a whole makes really stupid decisions, but hey, it’s a rare horror movie that has protagonists who don’t. Yes, I wanted to slap Eric when he unwraps the book and then punch him when he reads aloud from the bits that someone has specifically scribbled over with the warning “DO NOT READ,” but maybe the mere presence of the book drops your IQ sharply.
It would explain a lot.
And when things get cranking, the movie ratchets up the terror and gore factor to eleven. This is one of the gorier feature films I’ve seen lately. These characters get put through the meatgrinder (not literally, but that’s about the only thing that doesn’t get used). I could have done without the tree rape scene, but it’s so iconic in the original that I get that they pretty much HAD to include it, and it’s slightly less exploitative than in the original.
About two thirds of the way through the film they start dropping lines and more direct references to the previous film, and I’m suddenly annoyed again. I mean, they’ve been referring to the original the whole time, really, and it was fine. It just seemed like suddenly they were jamming references in, whether they fit or not. The line “her eyes, what happened to her eyes?” is just thrown away, for instance. I liked it better when the references were slightly more oblique – the appearance of the chainsaw was fun and I liked the flooded road, even if the rain seemed more plot-driven than realistic. (Álvarez had the same problem with callbacks to original films in last year’s Alien: Romulus as well.)
Things go completely off the rails towards the end, with the blood rain finale making no sense to me, at least not by the rules that are set out by the film itself. By my count the demon only gets three of the required five souls – you can stretch it to four if you count Mia, even though she gets freed. Given that a soul is freed – purified – by fire, then David’s death can’t count, right? Either way, the final confrontation between Mia and the summoned Abomination is fun, but ultimately disappointing – the creature effect isn’t particularly interesting (where are my Deadites?) and the monster is way too easily defeated for something that requires such a complicated series of events to be summoned.
I would totally have watched a sequel, though.
The Bottom Line
I’m concentrating on the things that bug me, and that does Evil Dead a disservice. It’s a good movie, really, a very well-made horror flick with some great atmosphere, cinematography, pacing and – especially – practical special effects. If I’m disappointed, it’s because it’s so close to being a fantastic film and instead falls a little short. It doesn’t fail the first film, exactly, but it certainly isn’t as interesting or iconic – of course that was an awful high bar to try and reach.
