Not terrible, but certainly not the Evil Dead. An honest review.

Rating: 4/10 (28 September 2013)

For starters, it's come to my attention that many of the reviews for this film are clearly 'Plants', people working for the film studio that produced the film posting fake positive reviews. You'll noticed that after this review there are about 40 or 50 consecutive reviews of 10 stars by people who apparently had their lives changed by how good this film was, but a quick check of their profiles reveals that most of them have only ever reviewed or rated this one film. To get to the genuine reviews, you'll want to skip about five pages ahead of this point. Now, I am a big fan of the Evil Dead franchise and much of Raimi and Campbells other projects, so I approached this film with cautious optimism. However, what I got is basically what I anticipated, a decent film with good camera work etc, but without any of the inspiration, creativity, or charm of the original. The remake of Evil Dead relies heavily on gore and 'jump scares' to substitute real horror, and unlike it's predecessor it takes itself very seriously. Don't expect to smile or have fun with this film, it isn't a 'fun' horror. The cast includes two major protagonists, a recovering drug addict named 'Mia' and her brother 'David', and their friends, a fairly interchangeable ensemble of attractive 20 somethings who could be from nearly any horror film ever made. While the gore-effects were well done and the filming is good, I found that the deadites were very disappointing for being too 'minimalist' in their appearance. They're mostly just Regan McNeil from The Exorcist, with pale make up and yellow contact lenses used to make them look 'demonic' while they chatter about how the protagonists various dead relatives are doing this or that in hell. The final confrontation with The Abomination was a big let down too. The whole film was basically about the deadites trying to raise 'The Abomination', so you're expecting a pretty impressive demon, but what you get is the girl from The Ring. A thin, pale girl, with long lank hair, her arms dangling limp at her sides, and a penchant for crawling on all fours. In the end it's a watchable movie, but nothing that anyone will be talking about in a years time, and certainly it isn't an Evil Dead film. It suffers from what many films suffer from at the moment, a fear of being seen as 'campy' or 'cheesy' of not being gritty and real enough, a fear that gets in the way of having fun and making something larger than life, and which in the end results in yet another grim, dull, overly serious, and forgettable movie. Not a bad movie, but I'm still waiting for a sequel to the real Evil Dead. One with a big chinned, spit-curl hero with a chainsaw for a hand and a hot dame in the other.