remake starts well

Rating: 6/10 (18 August 2013)

Friends Mia (Jane Levy), David (Shiloh Fernandez), Eric (Lou Taylor Pucci), Olivia (Jessica Lucas), and Natalie (Elizabeth Blackmore) go to an isolated cabin. Mia is an addict trying to quit cold turkey. They find the Book of the Dead and all hell breaks loose.
Fede Alvarez wrote/directed this remake of Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead (1981). The movie starts off well. I wish he developed the addiction story a lot more. There is some allusion to a bigger commentary on drug rehabilitation. The action is good fun classic horror moments. It's got great classic camera movements. Everything is going well.
About midway, Jane Levy's character is sidelined. Shiloh Fernandez takes more center stage. Sadly, he's just a functional Latino hunk. He can't hold the screen as well as Bruce Campbell. The more interesting character is the nerdy sidekick played by Lou Taylor Pucci. Then the 3rd act gets going, and it devolves more and more into a slasher-porn movie. It's all screams, darkness, blood splashing. Even the return of Jane Levy can't save it. It ends as an exercise to see how much red paint they can splatter. This started with so much promise, but satisfied very little of it. We get none of the humor. We do get the return of the chainsaw. But Bruce Campbell saying "Groovy" after the credits really doesn't do it for me.