Not much substance, and Not enough camp,

Rating: 6/10 (10 July 2013)

The movie could have been so great and so scary, but it just comes up short. There is absolutely no time setting up the characters, no chance for character development. We don't get to know these characters, so we cannot really understand the choices that they make. Ex: Why is Eric so interested in the book?
There was a lot of fan service in this movie; you could tell that the directors really liked Evil Dead, they even when as far as to incorporate audio from the original. There was just too much fan service; one example is when Olivia cut off her arm. She cuts it off to stop the possession, but it doesn't work. So why is their a scene of her cutting off her arm if the directors knew it wasn't going to work? Because Ash cuts off his hand in Evil Dead 2. I think that trying to put too much of the original in this was a bad idea. I understand that if they had not done it that the fans would be outraged, but there has to be a subtler ways to do it.
This movie also was not campy enough for what they were trying to do. They wanted this set in the "real" world. The gore (which was great) and the setting were all based on what would happen in the real world. When people got injured, their wounds didn't magically heal in the next scene. When they get hit by something you can almost feel the bones breaking underneath. I liked all that stuff, but then they tried to give the characters One Liners. I felt this was a little out of place in this movie. The tone they were going for was very serious, And so when Mia says "Feast on this" at the end of the film and jams a Chainsaw thru the Evils head, it seems a little out of place. There is no room for a one liner in a serious movie. If they wanted to incorporate One Liners then they should have made the film a little goofier, they should have injected a little more camp and the One Liners would have fit in perfectly.
I thought that the big bad in this movie was a little lame. After the demon devours 5 souls (I only counted 3, 4 if you count the dog) then blood will rain from the sky(this was cool) and the Evil will emerge from the earth. When the Evil finally does show up it's in the form of a girl, and she is defeated pretty quickly. Mia just literately stands there while The Evil SLOWLY comes into range of her chainsaw. Then its all over, Mia kills it easily. I'm sorry but was I suppose to be scared of this Evil? Where was the giant tree face like in Evil Dead 2? Where were the possessed trees? Where was the ominous fog? Where was anything that was in the original that gave you the sense that The Evil was always around and always ready to get you? The Evil was always felt in the original, you always felt that it was watching, not so much in this one. There was one cool part where the Evil pushed over a car with its bare hands. But that begs the question: Where was this strength the whole time? Why was the Evil having such a hard time crawling out of the hole? Why couldn't it keep hold of Mia with its super demon grip? Why was it crawling so slowly? Just like everything else in this film, it came up short.
And the Last thing to nit pick about was the lack of dismemberment. Don't get me wrong, there was a lot of blood and gore in this film. It was all done practically with no CGI so I liked that. The Movie states that the only way to stop these creatures is to Burn them, Bury them, or dismember them. The problem is that they never actually dismember anyone, and yet that seems to stop them. In the original Ash and Scott had to cut the girls into pieces in order to stop them. In this one it seems that doing some damage to the brain will kill them. In the case of Olivia, all they did to her was blow off her arms, and suddenly she is dead. A little bit of arm loss would not have stopped the demons in the first one. The movie sets up the rule that the body must be dismembered, but then didn't follow thru. And don't get me started on the alternative methods of "saving someones soul." They can Burn or bury someone alive, and that, to me, just seemed like a cop out for the dismemberment. Why they felt the need to add that in I have no idea.
Alright! Enough with the negative stuff. The gore was great. There was lots of blood. The pace was quick, the movie did not lag in the middle. I liked the opening, where we see a completely different set of characters deal with the book. I also liked the fact that they were there to help their friend detox. It gave then a nice reason to be at the cabin in the first place, and it also gave the characters a reason to stay.
The original did a better job of creating dread, as well as a mythology. But go and see it for the gore and the one or two jump scares that might get you. It was fun quick, they defiantly could have done a worse job.