Best horror re-make since Dawn of the Dead in 2004.

Rating: 9/10 (7 April 2013)

The new Evil Dead movie could be a litmus test for true fans of the horror genre. As Entertainment Weekly's review stated so well: the new Evil Dead is "the bloodiest, goriest, slapstickiest horror movie since, well, The Evil Dead."
Horror fans would grin or laugh gleefully at most of the goriest scenes because a) most are truly unique and different than what we've scene before, and b) we've seen EVERYTHING before. Anybody else would shut their eyes, grimace, flee the theater, or just wouldn't go.
And it's not that horror fans are gore junkies. Blood, gore and violence are irrelevant and tedious if it's not weaved into a captivating story with decent acting, great directing, and creative plotting.
And that's exactly what the new Evil Dead delivers. Most die-hard horror aficionados know the original Evil Dead by heart. To re-do the first and deliver a new and different version while staying within the bounds of the original is no easy task. But Fede Alvarez in his directorial debut knocks it out of the park. It strikes that fine balance between reverence to the original (with both overt and subtle references) and newness/uniqueness to keep us captivated and excited (and excitement is key as most of us are definitely looking for a cerebral adrenaline rush).
Just modernizing a classic with a bigger budget takes no creativity and falls into the tedium and redundancy which most horror fan's hate. Gus Van Sant's Psycho re-make, where nearly every scene is "copied exactly," is a perfect example of this. One word: BORING.
The last, great horror re-make was 2004's "Dawn of the Dead" which at the time was the best re-make since David Cronenberg's "The Fly" in 1986. That's why us horror fans are rejoicing to have a new movie to re-watch 10 times until the next good one.