You all are going to die... op op op, Evil Dead style

Rating: 7/10 (5 April 2013)

The remake/sequel era continues. Will it ever end? Halloween, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, the Hills Have Eyes, are any horror franchises safe? With the latest remake opening today, is this the new normal and are we ever going to see original horror films again? The Evil Dead remake has a lot going against it. For one, it is a remake, and two, the original has such a strong cult following they are sure to cry foul no matter how good the film is. I loved the original, loved it, loved it, loved it and I was unsure about this release. This film actually was very entertaining and I took it for what it was - a horror remake. And based off of that criteria, it was an enjoyable, blood soaking movie that is better than the average horror flare. This movie has its flaws, which are many, but overall it was a good little horror film and will be in the top 5 for best horror in 2013.
Some of the problems I had with it were that this time around, instead of having carefree kids go to a cabin for fun, we have a heroin addict trying to go cold turkey and under no circumstances will they leave the cabin. There is no reason why we need such character development in this type of film. All of the sudden, we know the back story of all of the characters whereas in the original you barely knew their names let alone their occupation, status, whether or not they where a drug addict or if they have abandonment issues. This type of character driven movie slowly takes away from what really is important, the deadites obviously.
There are, however, cool self mutilation scenes, very cool kill scenes and a somewhat satisfying ending to the film, so it is not a totally drag. There is some CGI but not as much compared to others in the genre, which is a good thing because we can only take so much fake blood. CGI just looks cheap in other horror movies and really lessens the impact of the violent scene we are watching. And speaking about those violent scenes, they are really violent and it's nice to see the fake blood splash into the actors' faces rather than to digitalize the blood where it would look just like a cartoon.
We have the burden of living in the Remake/Sequel Era of film and it sucks because instead of getting original material that could be mind blowing and would add a fresh new take of the genre we are left with these glossy, sharp looking remakes that just adds staleness to the genre. Why would they even remake Evil Dead anyway? It wasn't even that popular of a film, even its sequels were considered minor successes. The whole reason why Evil Dead struck such a cord with its audience is because it was so over the top. The axe chopping, the claymation foolery, the deadite eating off its own hand, these are the things that made the original awesome. While there are some scenes in the remake that do remind you of the original, the overall craziness factor seems to be missing. In the original trilogy, you couldn't guess what was going to happen next whereas in this remake, you didn't only guess, you knew what was going to happen. However there was a nice of enough twist at the end to remind us that there is some originality in this film to make it stand alone, standing alone 10 steps behind the original of course, but alone nonetheless. This movie was entertaining and it had a few jumps here and there but it is a remake and a remake has rarely ever been better then the original. But behind all of the glossy feel there is some fun to be had here. I recommend this film, especially for the people who haven't seen the original because their expectations wont be so high.
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