It Doesn't Get Much More Brutal Than This

Rating: 5/10 (2 October 2014)

Horror remakes have been big business for over a decade now. From mainstream horror classics to cult favorites it seems like every recognizable horror title has gotten the remake/reboot treatment. So the remake of Sam Raimi's beloved "Evil Dead" doesn't come as all that much of a shock. What is a pleasant surprise is that Raimi himself helped produce the remake, and how faithful to the original material it manages to be while still feeling like a distinctly different film.
"Evil Dead" tells the story of five youths who go to an isolated cabin in the woods to help their friend Mia detox from a drug overdose and hopefully kick the stuff for good. Joining Mia is her brother, who has a history of not being around when things get rough, and her friends who have seen her try to give up drugs before and fail. With tension already high the group discovers the remnants of a witch burning in the basement, along with an ominous book. When one of them reads from the book it releases an evil force that begins to possess the various members of the group and drive them to do horrific things to themselves and others, all with the goal of unleashing an unspeakable evil onto the world.
The remake of "Evil Dead" has a number of things working in its favor. Director Fede Alvarez was intelligent enough to not try and reinvent the wheel, rather he's just trying to cause a much more spectacular mess with the wheel fans already know and love. The general plot is almost to the letter the same as the original film, and rather than trying to introduce some sort of new twist the film sets out to deliver the same story in the most brutal fashion possible. What the characters in this film suffer through is nothing short of apocalyptic. The physical suffering and the way it is shown leaves little to the imagination, but it's delivered with such swift efficiency that it doesn't feel like the drawn out pain of something like "Saw" or "Hostel." Of course all of this is very much in keeping with the original, which was quite gory and brutal for its time.
The performances are also surprisingly strong for a film of this type. The acting in the original tended towards the "so bad it's funny" end of things (something embraced more fully by the sequels.) Here there really is no room for laughs, unintentional or otherwise, but the acting isn't so dour as to put a damper on the fun of it all. The characters are fairly thinly sketched out on paper but each actor brings something to their part that makes it feel like there's more to these people than what we're seeing. This gives the characters some dimension, perhaps not a full three dimensions but certainly more than most of the victims in these sorts of films.
While for the most part, not trying to reinvent the wheel was to the film's advantage it also means that it falls into a few of the classic stumbling points of the genre as well. For example the film, despite having more women than men in the cast, comes across as rather misogynistic. This is mainly owing to the fact that the most brutal violence is committed against the female characters. There are also some smaller things that add up as well, such as the possessed character cursing almost constantly. This is prevalent in possession stories thanks to "The Exorcist," but all the films since then fail to realize that the reason that it worked in that movie was because of how young Linda Blair was. Having an adult swearing like a sailor just doesn't do the same thing, or much of anything really.
There's also the ending stretch of the film, which is where the whole thing runs out of steam. On the one hand the possessions are actually for something, and it's all building to a larger purpose. This is a welcome change from the original where the possessing entities seemed to just be tormenting the victims for the heck of it. However when the built up moment happens it's a tad underwhelming, mainly because it fails to distinguish itself from everything that had already been going on up to that point.
Different horror films operate on different principles. Remaking "A Nightmare on Elm Street" wasn't a great idea because it was a cerebral horror story, and there wasn't much that could be done with that story or idea that would improve or distinguish it from the original. "Evil Dead" on the other hand is a visceral horror film where the "story" is just the excuse to tear apart the victims. This is the sort of film it makes sense to remake since so much has advanced in the realm of gore effects (practical and virtual) since 1980. While the new "Evil Dead" doesn't really improve on the original it does capture the essence of what made the first film memorable, and in doing so the film justifies its own existence even though it fails to transcend its origins.