With all the liquid bodily fluids, a solid remake!

Rating: 8/10 (12 February 2014)

When word got out that Evil Dead, one of the most beloved horror/gorefests of the previous century, would get the remake treatment, most people were less than enthusiastic. Every decent horror movie from those decades had probably already been remade, and not even classics like Halloween proved untouchable enough for studios to stay away from. Most of the time, these 'reimaginations' (as they are euphemistically called) lacked the skill, bravado or craftsmanship of the originals, and even if they managed to match their quality, they often lacked creativity, originality or daring vision.
I love the original Evil Dead films for their energetic pacing and humorously icky approach to horror, so I wasn't convinced either that an Evil Dead remake was something the world needed. On the other hand, I was too young to watch the Evil Dead films when they came out, so they are not sacred to me, and I like to keep an open mind to all developments in the horror genre. Unexpectedly, the new Evil Dead was released with high praise from many critics and fans, and as far as I'm concerned, Evil Dead can take its place among The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) and Dawn of the Dead (2004) as horror remakes that can peacefully coexist with their respective originals. Why? Because they take what was good from the original, yet also add something new. They start on the same road, yet don't walk it all the way to the end, taking the occasional sidetrack that brings a few surprises.
Both Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell co-produced the movie, stating a desire to revisit their beloved first project, and do things with it they had not done yet. Usually, when the original creators say something like that, it seems to mean that they were notified about the remake, and received a sum of money in exchange for taking an executive producer's credit and providing active support for the new movie. But Evil Dead Reborn is different. The original film had such a massively inventive display of special effects and in-your-face energy that it was easy to look beyond the holes in the screenplay and the technical shortcomings; audiences these days won't fall for that so easily, but the writers came up with a great screenplay that allows for plenty of scares and physical horror, without resorting to a lazily-written re-thread. We start out on comfortably familiar grounds, in a cabin in the woods, where a group of young people inadvertently awaken an old evil that takes possession of them, one by one. One of the nice touches is that when the terror starts affecting the ex-drug addict, the rest initially explains it away as on of her drug withdrawal hallucinations. Needless to say, when they finally get smart and want to leave, the bridge is gone and there is no escape.
One big departure this movie takes from the original is the tone. Where the original movies were violent and gruesome, yet appropriately slapstick due to the anarchistic photography and excessive amounts of gore, the remake is more serious, sincerely terrifying, nerve-wrecking, and has some well-timed shocks. Two aspects of the originals were kept: the frenetic pacing, and the copious amounts of bodily fluids. Where most horror movies muddle through introductions and set-up, and don't pick up speed until well after an hour (leaving only thirty minutes until the end), this movie shifts into high gear after 25 minutes, and keeps speeding up until the end. And in a day and age where studios try to contain the amount of splatter in order to not scare off the general public and keep the movie financially profitable, we get showered with amounts of gore quite unheard of since the eighties. I found it disturbingly pleasant to see such an old-school amount of blood, rotting flesh and severed appendages flying around, which could have easily become ridiculous, yet nowhere does it completely undermine the creepy punch the movie delivers.
Although not overtly goofy as its predecessors, this movie isn't without its subtle yet crude humor, for instance when Eric slips over a piece of skin that Olivia has just cut from her face; the improvised amputation with an electric knife, the nail gun antics, and the final appearance of the true star of each Evil Dead movie: the chainsaw, which makes for good old-fashioned mayhem. It is fun to see how the creators have added new elements, such as the Abomination, and found ways to present big and small elements from the originals with inventive twists.
Of course, many people will think the original was perfect, and the remake is useless by default; they complain that it is too much of the same, or straying too far from the source. Some say it is ridiculous with dumb characters. Well, what horror movies doesn't contain characters doing unwise things? Most horror plots are actually moving forward due to people doing ill-advised stuff. What can we say? Times change. The original movies had their shortcomings as well, but they were a perfect product of their time, and work exceptionally well within that context. The makers of the remake acknowledged that modern audiences have different perspectives of horror movies, and I think they did a fine job translating Evil Dead to a new era. Bruce Campbell himself helped to get it made, and he concludes the movie in a post-credits scene with his signature 'Groovy!' Who am I to argue with Ash?