First half was great, second half fell apart...

Rating: 6/10 (24 April 2015)

I would like to state that I have never seen any of the other Evil Dead movies (even though I definitely should), so I will be reviewing this as a stand alone film and not comparing it to the movies it was remaking.
In my opinion, this movie had a very solid first half. I even went into this movie with pretty low expectations after reading and watching some spoiler-free reviews that didn't give it very favourable ratings. The opening scene was pretty freaking creepy to me and it helped introduce the viewers to the concept of "possession" that they will be using in the film. It became apparent, the dark tone that the film was setting for itself right from the get-go and it complemented the film very well. The scenes where the demon was released and Mia getting possessed in the woods were really freaky in my opinion. The scares that they provided felt quite genuine and not tacked on. The movie was setting up rules for itself to follow later in the plot (an example would be "If the demon feasts on five souls, it'll get released from hell"), and at this point I didn't understand the criticism the film was receiving. The first two deaths were very gory and disturbing and the shock value added to the scariness of the movie. Sure, there wasn't all that much character development happening, maybe a plot hole or two, characters were making stupid decisions, but like 95% of horror movies are plagued with of all that but worse these days. I thought the movie was on the right track.
Fast-forward to right about after the second girl died and the movie was starting to go down the drain. Characters decisions became more and more dumb. Scares became cheap and tiresome. A bunch of random sh*t was happening and it actually started to become boring. Logic became less and less apparent (How did Mia speak completely fine in the grave when she cut her tongue in half with an X-Acto knife?). By the finale, the movie literally threw all of the rules it set for itself out the freaking window. I thought the demon need to "claim" five souls before it could rise from the ground? It only possessed four people and one of them got unpossessed (Mia) before it even came out of the ground. That's three souls, not five. Does that one guy who never even got possessed but burned to death in the house count? Because that's still four. Does the dog that Mia killed count?! God, if you're going to try to set up some weird demon logic for your movie, you should at least stick to it. Well, apparently the weird demon/abomination thing rises from the ground anyway for an epic final battle! Jk it's not epic, it's just predictable and boring. Mia rips her own arm off like it's made of mashed potatoes because the demon thing flipped a jeep on her arm. It ends with Mia killing the abomination demon (still don't even know what to call it) and walking off into the sunrise without one of her freaking arms. Are we expected to believe that there is any hope for her and she won't just bleed to death? The bridge was taken out by the flood and I don't think there are any accessible towns nearby. Oh yeah, and they tried to throw in some weird twist in the last 3 seconds by zooming in on the book flipping pages, like it did earlier in the movie when something bad was gonna happen. But it just felt so tacked on and lame. So yeah, to conclude, the second half was pretty terrible.
For some of the things I haven't addressed like the acting, score, atmosphere, and cinematography. Well the acting wasn't as bad as other reviews have stated in my opinion. Jane Levy's (Mia) performance was actually really good and Lou Taylor Pucci's (Eric) performance was also pretty solid. The three other actors who played David, Olivia, and Natalie, their performances ranged from good to mediocre. The score was nothing to remember at all. The atmosphere was actually very well done, very creepy and unsettling. And the cinematography was also quite impressive (for instance, the shots where it showed the demon chasing a character or going to a destination through the forest in first- person view).
All in all, it is an alright horror film. The first half was great, the acting was pretty good, it had a creepy atmosphere and the cinematography was quite impressive. But it was brought down by a tragic second half, some cheap scares, flawed logic, plot holes, forgettable soundtrack and its failure to stay consistent with its own rules that it set for itself at the start.
6/10