HK Auteur Review - Evil Dead

Rating: 5/10 (28 July 2013)

Five friends head to a remote cabin, where the discovery of the Book of the Dead leads them to unwittingly summon up demons living in the nearby woods.
The three Evil Dead films is a trilogy of inconsistencies. The opening of Evil Dead 2 rewrites the events of first Evil Dead, and Army of Darkness' opening rewrites the conclusion of Evil Dead 2. The sequencing of events has always connected only inside the audience's minds as a complete storyline. My first-ever experience with the Evil Dead franchise wasn't watching the films but instead going to see Evil Dead Musical, which combined the first two Evil Dead story lines together (which in my opinion was much better). So I didn't know what a remake would mean in context to continuing the story or what kind of expectations to have for an Evil Dead remake. So to get right into it...
The new Evil Dead... is so-so. I did not find the reason that justified this remake.
The major issue with Evil Dead is that there is no X factor. It's neither funny or has a lead performance akin to Bruce Campbell's in the original that raises the piece above the sum of its parts. I'm not asking for either again. The story plays fast and loose with its characters, as a result we never genuinely know who we should be rooting for till it's too late. The typical stupid horror movie mistakes they make are unbelievably stupid. The lack of humor in itself is not a problem but there's no additional layer or emotion contrasting to what's going on. So the audience is left simply moving through the plot points, guessing who's turn it is to die next. That would be okay if we weren't already so familiar with the story. Evil Dead completely relies on its scares to entertain the audience alone, and somehow that falls short.
The practical in-camera effects deserve praise, as they add effective weight to the scares and sufficient texture to the gore. The end result is quite cringe-worthy. Practical effects bring more weight to the spectacle than CGI and I applaud anyone who is not letting practical effects die. I suspect director Fede Alvarez would say the X factor is the gore and the scares. But after the Joss Whedon-produced Cabin in the Woods, I'm expecting more now by default. If only this movie was released first....
It's been reported Sam Raimi is going to make Army of Darkness 2, which will connect to the events of this remake. He's free to do what he wants, but it's not going to improve this Evil Dead remake by any means. For that, viewers who haven't seen The Evil Dead will be probably enjoy this more. Fans of the original like myself would probably like this remake a lot more if it wasn't called Evil Dead.
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