Give Me Back My (Cash in) Hand!

Rating: 2/10 (23 January 2014)

Let me start by saying that I am a massive Evil Dead fan, and believe that Evil Dead II is one of the greatest sequels ever. With that said, I went in to the Evil Dead Remake, boomstick in hand ready to shoot myself when I sensed a bad movie.
Evil Dead 2013 continues Hollywood's sluggish attempt to bring back every horror movie you ever loved and squash it, taking as much joy and charm away from its original film that it actually pains you. Surely, they would have learned from My Bloody Valentine 3D, right? Wrong.
The story here is pretty much the same, and actually probably more coherent to begin with than ED 1 & 2 - as five teens go to a Cabin In The Woods to support their drug addicted member through the next few days as she tries to go cold turkey. Unfortunately for her and the rest of Scooby Doo-esque gang of friends, an evil book is discovered...
The main problem with this film is its lack of charisma. All of the fresh faced leads are useless and stereotypical to the genre. Gone is the amazing/terrible acting display of the brilliant/awful Bruce Campbell, replaced instead with "Shiloh Fernandez". I'm fine with bad acting (look back at any of your favourite horror films - they will all have someone with the facial expressions of a tree, or "Lacktors" if you will), but apart from looking pretty, Fernandez has literally nothing otherwise that stops you from wanting to see him killed by something horrible in these evil woods.
Gone too is literally any kind of humour. hile ED2 had this bizarre twisted funny bone running through it, this movie doesn't even attempt it. No lines, no puppets, no deer head, nothing. This isn't a bad thing, because I'd argue that Army of Darkness (the third in the Evil Dead series) went a little too over the top. But not even a line? A sly reference to the original? Nope. Nothing. Going back to other bad horror remakes, I can remember that even Friday the 13th 2009 had a few stabs (!) at it.
On saying that, I did laugh twice at unintentionally hysterical parts, both involving Jane Levy. Our addicted heroine of sorts, while becoming possessed, she witnesses lots of strange things, and just look out for her reflection... it's stupidly hilarious.
Which leads me on to the deaths. This film was given an 18 certificate in the UK, something so rare these days, which'll be a result of this being actually a mash up of both ED part 1 and 2, pilfering the best bits from both of them. With that comes lots of the makeshift weapons used in both, tweaked ever so slightly. Like the originals, this movie's best moments come from the practical effects: lots of blood, tongues, hands, etc, with one scene involving a razor blade standing out, and giving you your only scene where you stop and go "Wow, that's not terrible and looks actually quite good". Unfortunately, that is the only highlight. Otherwise, each death is really rather flat, dull even.
If you want to do a remake involve George Romero (Dawn of the Dead 2004 and The Crazies 2010 were both inferior but great), otherwise please please stay away, as films like this are straight up painful to sit through.
In the Evil Dead movies the characters are possessed by evil spirits and turned in to monsters. It's just a shame Evil Dead 2013 has been taken over by something so unscary, lifeless and frankly boring that it makes you want to cut off your own hand and chase yourself out of the cinema with it.
@JonnyJonJon1