The Boring Dead

Rating: 4/10 (7 April 2013)

I can't believe how awful the remake of The Evil Dead is. I've been waiting for it for so long and was so surprised when I found myself yawning while watching it and I almost fell asleep once. It's so incredibly NOT scary I even started heckling it toward the end. Here are its main flaws:
1. The characters are not likable, especially the shaggy unpleasant dude who is completely annoying and is played by probably the worst actor on the face of the earth. The main female character is a junkie. The rest of them are just cardboard cutouts with no motivation.
2. There is no build up to suspense. In the original Evil Dead all the characters were just carefree people going to a cabin to have a good time and that set up is what made what eventually happens to them so horrible in juxtaposition. But this time around they're at the cabin to help their junkie friend go cold turkey off heroin. Huh? So in other words they're already there, prepared for a bad time so when things get worse well, so what?
3. The sound. The music is just horrible and relentless. Sometimes it sounds like the score from an Indiana Jones film. Other times there is this noise that sounds like a tornado siren blaring as if it's a big neon sign pointing at the screen telling us "This part is suppose to be scary so be scared." Also the demon voices are just a joke. Instead of being deep and menacing they sound like some little kid going "Whooooo" in the dark pretending she's a ghost.
4. This movie is just not scary and it's also not funny. For some reason they give us an opening scene involving a woman who is possessed by a demon so they sort of give it away right from the start. When other people start getting possessed we're like, right, we already saw that in the first scene. I really can't put my finger on why it's not scary. There are a few really well shot scenes where I sat there thinking, this should be really, really scary but for some reason it's not. It's boring.
5. There is too much attention given to the Book of the Dead. This time around the possessed people aren't just randomly acting nuts but following instructions from the book (scald yourself in the shower, cut your face off). The film keeps showing us pages from the book once again as if we need a big arrow pointing to the screen explaining for us what's happening and why.
6. The ending is nothing like the original. In the original we are taken down the rabbit hole into shear madness and ultimately there's no escape from the evil. In this one, get this (warning spoilers ahead), the main female lead who is the first to get possessed gets buried alive then her brother digs her back up and brings her back to life through a makeshift defibrillator (um, okay) and now she's normal again then for some reason her brother goes and kills himself so that SHE becomes the last one standing against some OTHER demon woman who comes out of the ground no less and chases her around and blah blah blah and in the end she survives. The ending is total nonsense and is a formulaic climax instead of keeping to the insane, no hope spirit of The Evil Dead.
7. The acting is so bad I have to wonder why they wrote in so much unnecessary dialogue since the actors could barely show a single emotion, and even the dialogue is like a big arrow pointing at the screen telling us "This is what's happening" as if we're so stupid we can't figure it out for ourselves. At one point one character literally says something like "I think I caused this by reading from that book" well DUH!!!
8. The script is the worst script for a remake I've seen since I Spit On Your Grave. Why do they have a nail gun at the cabin in the first place? Why do they have not only an electric knife (or electricity for that matter) but also a perfectly cooked, rare beef roast of some sort that one character cuts up with the electric knife but apparently they never eat it. Shouldn't they be toasting marshmallows or something? Who is with whom anyway? Who's cabin is it? If they were going to change the script so much then why even stage it in a cabin? Why not stage it in a tiny little apartment or something?
9. The film is so dark. I mean the lighting, not the atmosphere. You really have to strain to even see what's going on.
10. Finally, for the life of me, I can't figure out where two of the characters even disappeared to. They were possessed then suddenly they weren't even part of the film anymore. Did I see some type of edited version or something? What happened to the dark skinned girl for example? Maybe that was the part I fell asleep in.
The only things this film has going for it.
1. There are a handful of really original gory scenes but you can get that with just about any straight to video horror film.
2. Jane Levy proves she can do more than Suburgatory. She's by far the only real actor in the film and she does a decent job given the mixed up script plopped onto her lap.
3. If you're lucky like me you can sneak into the theater next door and watch The Croods and you won't feel so ripped off.
Well, that's it. That's my two cents about this stinker called Evil Dead.
PS, let's hope the remake of Suspiria is better than this.