So Almost Good But Just Ain't...

Rating: 4/10 (6 April 2013)

Alright alright, we all know Evil Dead is and will always be one of the greatest horror films ever. As amazing as it is, it certainly has some inadvertently hilarious moments that could be improved on, made more serious, done with modern brutality, whatever. This is what we all hoped was being done with this remake. That is not what was done with this remake.
My gripes (some mild spoilers):
No tension. I just didn't feel it. Everything was OK, then it wasn't, and the characters just sort of rolled with it almost like it was expected.
No insanity. The constant mad cackling of the original is harrowing. These "Evil Dead" chumps just kinda come at you, not much talk and no laughs. They didn't seem that scary.
No actual "Evil Dead" at all. With the exception of one character, NO ONE in this remake dies and then becomes "the Evil Dead", which is sort of um...why they called the movie that. The shmoes in the remake become possessed, and then go ape sh*t. Only one of them actually dies and becomes the Evil Dead. Hmm...
The plot and "rules system" of this movie is a hot mess. They mention 3 specific ways to kill those who have become possessed...and then use them only occasionally. One chick goes down after having her head bashed in with the back of a toilet, another after getting shot in the face with a bunch of nails and getting her arm blown off. Also, right at the beginning we see one get knocked out by a shotgun stock to the head. Knock out a Deadite with a blow to the head!? Ridiculous. We know this, don't we?
Who the hell are those dummies in the opening scene? What's up with the freaks? Who is that lady and what language was she speaking and why!? Then after handling business quite nicely, they WRAP THE BOOK IN PLASTIC AND BARBED WIRE AND LEAVE IT THERE!? Good lawd. Someone should have second drafted the script and made some sense of something, somewhere, anywhere.
I'm not even sure what that was that crawled out of the ground at the end. Big villain? Seriously, what was it? It wasn't scary. Some skinny chick with no nipples...I would have preferred the black guy with the candle on his head from the book illustrations. Yikes...
Replacing the Lovecraftian horror of the original with the whole Satan thing was so weak it was sad. The book wasn't scary anymore, or mysterious and strange and ancient. It felt like some crappy Satanist's book printed in the 80s. WTF? And dude wasted no time at all reading the passages aloud, for not even a shred of a decent reason other than he was written to.
No one would be dumb enough to think that you could defrib someone with a car battery, jumper cables, and some hypodermic needles. No one.
I agree with whoever else said that the only thing they felt for any of the characters was a hope that the brother would kill that ho and get out of there so the movie could end.
OK, the few things I liked about it:
The look of it. I dug it. And the presentation of the gore. Dug it. The scene with the burning tree and the gravedigging looked great. The rain at the end was great, and a nice attempt at trying to top the broken pipe in the basement of the original film.
The two male actors were fantastic, I thought, and really carried what little weight the movie had. I thought they were both just excellent.
Well, that's it. I'm done burning this halfassery.