The Cast & Crew Embarrass Themselves and Sam Rami

Rating: Null/10 (21 July 2013)

We all can remember the reaction we had to Sam Rami's Evil Dead trilogy back in the late '80s. It involved a collected range from great delight due to the comedic undertone set by Rami, the "Ewwwww" sounds we made in our head as blood splattered all over the camera lens, and the moments that scared us enough to take a few bathroom breaks. The first two films were the two most memorable horror films of the 1980s and should be celebrated. Though Army of Darkness didn't hold the stature of the original two, it supplied the viewer a different path of the story and brought the story to a close suitably.
Optimistically, I'll start with the qualities I found credible. From the prologue of, the Evil Dead remake has an eerie look to it that stirs up the suspense in your eyes. The film score in a horror film is so vital, and that's one thing this movie does get right, I really loved the score. The house in which the film is shot in, is styled in a morose manner that makes for a good setting for a ghost story such as this. The make-up design for Evil Dead is overwhelming, the jury is still out whether that means it works for the film or against it. I began to wonder if they just tacked on unnecessary gore-cenrtic tags to scenes to literally stop the story from ascending to anything at all and just please blood craving suckers.
I think if any horror film were to be remade (I still don't understand why we're remaking highly successful, quality horror movies to begin with), The Evil Dead would be a great choice as long as it was tackled without an approach of comedy. The film takes that chance, it's nice to see the contrast in storytelling, but it isn't that successful. Sam Rami's film was cut off from reality, but they knew it and embraced it with their method of injecting comedy to the scares. With this approach, they have to at least pretend this could actually happen to people somewhere in the world, but I never got that feeling of reality once. It retained the tacky qualities of the original, but didn't inherit the quality.
It isn't scary! A few times, it begins to build to something frightening, but it never surmounts that peak. Evil Dead's quick pan-in shots that cut to preposterous demon snaps don't get my fear levels rumbling. The demon shots themselves play like a early development versions of The Exorcist that just took an enthusiastic dose of acid. It's not even well made enough to constitute as a throwaway, entertainment fodder. With little sense of structure, recycled dialogue, characters who purposely go against the way rational human beings problem solve, Evil Dead retains no class and should have "Tasteless" written over the DVD cover in fire- engine, red-blood splatter.
One thing Evil Dead attempts to do is create some humanity with a topic about the overconsumption of drug and family issues. Too bad, it collapses in the attempts. At least it tries. Forcing myself to sit through the duration of the last twenty minutes, I stared with a foul look poisoning the screen thinking about the future of this genre. Creativity needs be revived and filmmakers need to grow the story realistically and stop trying to stylize every singly shot of movie. The result of that over-pizazz in horror films is all horror films feel the same nowadays. There's nothing to define The Evil Dead from the movie of the week except its ancestors reputation. We need to take the characters seriously to open up to a movie, we have to take the characters seriously to take the story seriously; and we have to take the story seriously to take the movie seriously.
Poor special effects are a inconsistent aspect of Evil Dead, but the dreadful acting can be found any minute of the movie. The film has the impudence to try to end with symbolism; eject the film from your DVD player before you even have the misfortune of seeing that. Evil Dead should have been retitled "How Many Times Can a Body Be Mutilated Without Croaking", that way Sam Rami's films wouldn't have had to undergo such awful representation to the new era of horror junkies.
Rating: 2.5/10
Grade: D