A remake that amps up the scares of the original but downplays the laughs, not as innovative or weird as the original but a decent effort.

Rating: Null/10 (28 April 2013)

The problem with being a fan of horror films is more so than any other genre the law of diminishing returns sets in fast. We watch horror films to be scared by them, but the more we watch the more we become used to the tricks of the trade and the harder it is to become scare us. That's why the primary audience for horror films is teenagers; they literally haven't seen enough horror films yet to become jaded.
So when a horror film comes along that is actually scary it really is something special, something to be held up and admired and that you excitedly tell all your other horror loving friends they need to see. The Evil Dead remake, as shocked as I am to say it, is just such a film. Don't get me wrong, The Evil Dead is not a wholly original film by any stretch of the imagination. Plenty of this is familiar territory. A bunch of young adults in an isolated cabin? Jump scares? Discordant music? We've seen all this before right? I mean this is a remake, we've literally seen all this before. Ah but director Fede Alavarez masterfully plays upon the fact that this is a remake for some of the scares. The old Hitchcock nugget about what is tension goes roughly as follows. Two people sit at a table, a bomb goes off, it's boring. Two people sit at a table, the camera pans down to show a bomb, then goes back to them sitting at a table. The audience knows what's going to happen and it's the waiting for that to happen that builds the tension. Fede Alvarez uses this trick repeatedly explicitly showing what will happen to a character in a page in the necronomicon and then making us slowly, gradually, agonisingly wait for the reveal to happen. But he's at his most clever when he uses the audience's prior knowledge of the earlier films to pull off the same trick. When one character gets an infected hand fans of the original films know exactly what's going to happen but he makes us wait for what seems an unbearably tense eternity for the inevitable to occur.
He also doesn't flinch away from his reveals. This is a gory and explicit film. Gore doesn't usually bother me since it's normally so flat and lifeless but Evil Dead had me peeking from between my hands on more than one occasion. It also helps that almost all of the effects in this film are practical. You'd be amazed how much that helps sell the horror. Or maybe you wouldn't, I know most horror fans despise cgi blood so they'll be pleased to hear there's plenty of dyed corn flour in this flick and nary a computer in sight.
But, whilst I think it being a remake is actually a really crucial aspect of the success of the film what a lot of fans want to know is, is it better than the original?
Well cards on the table guys. Evil Dead 2 is in my top ten favourite films of all time and the first Evil Dead is a brilliant, imaginative, innovative, insane film. The remake doesn't even come close to the twisted genius of the original. Partly that's because this film makes no attempt to be funny whereas the first Evil Dead film is one of the few films to ever successfully tread the line between scary and funny. If you go into this wanting it to be Evil Dead all over again then I'm sorry but you'll be disappointed.
Some have said this film would have been better received if it just dropped the Evil Dead name all together, but as I hope I've made clear much of the pleasure is in remixing those familiar Evil Dead elements in new ways. Think of it like a cover version. Take a song like somewhere over the rainbow and do it in a punk style, or a heavy metal style, or a jazz style. The covers aren't trying to improve on the original; they're trying to do the original in a different way. So we have with the 2013 Evil Dead. It's Evil Dead but played straight. I didn't think I would ever want such a thing but the film genuinely surprised me with how enjoyable a straight forward horror version of Evil Dead can be. And really what was Evil Dead 2 but a cover version of Evil Dead with the comedy dials turned up and the horror toned down? Why not do another version with the horror amped up instead?
It's not perfect by any means though. The biggest problem by far is the script which is clunky and contains some of the worst chunks of obvious expository dialogue you're likely to encounter. The acting is workmanlike at best with no real standouts and certainly nobody to rival Bruce Campbell's magnificently charismatic Ash. In fact the characters are another weak point. Nobody is annoying but they're all fairly flat and we don't have a stand out star. Although it's not like the non-Ash characters were well developed in the original. It also has very problematic sexual politics even for the relaxed standards of horror films. And the less said about the ending, the better.
So, not perfect, nor as good as the original but a worthy addition to the series and an increasingly rare example of a genuinely scary horror film.
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