It'll swallow your soul.

Rating: 5/10 (22 July 2013)

The original Evil Dead is one of those rare low-budget films that I have long considered to be perfect, so much so that I have always failed to see the benefit of a bigger budgeted remake; even when director Sam Raimi made Evil Dead II (which was essentially a more lavish retelling of the same story), he failed to match his original film's raw intensity and creativity.
I will admit, however, that this slick 21st-century version of the infamous 1981 'video nasty' briefly saw me reconsidering my stance. After introducing his obnoxious characters and establishing a somewhat pointless sub-plot about one of them being a recovering junkie, director Fede Alverez actually began to impress me with his handling of the horror, neatly creating an unsettling atmosphere (with the help of his incredibly creepy woodland setting) and delivering numerous, intense scenes of visceral, no-holds-barred carnage—guaranteed crowd-pleasers like self-dismemberment, nail-gun mutilation, shotgun damage and crushed heads.
The good stuff doesn't last for long though, and in its final act, the film goes into an irretrievable tailspin, bringing one of its least sympathetic characters back to life in a ridiculous plot development that beggars belief: with the aid of two syringes and a car battery, final survivor David (Shiloh Fernandez) is replaced by his presumed dead junkie sister Mia (Jane Levy), who loses a hand but still proceeds to kick deadite ass, chainsawing in half a crappy Grudge-like creature that crawls its way from the bowels of hell during a torrential downpour of blood. It might be a wonderfully gory way to end the film, but it's frustratingly dumb and deserves nothing but scorn and derision.
7/10 for the gore, minus one point for the stupid ending and another for the possessed Mia's unnecessary Exorcist-style expletives.