Evil Dead Serious - No laughs or Irony but plenty of blood and guts

Rating: 7/10 (19 April 2013)

The trend for making pointless remakes of beloved cult classics of yesteryear has by now become a running joke yet a modestly successful one for cash strapped studios. One might accuse the remakes of just being cheap crap to make money, forgetting that's exactly what most of the originals were in the first place! The difference of course is that the originals were lovingly well made crap, which is why they survived as pulp icons decades after their natural shelf life should have expired.
"The Evil Dead" is quite special in this horror pantheon. Notorious upon release for its then unheard of amount of blood, gore and vomit inducing effects – becoming a cause celebre "Video Nasty" in the UK during the anti-horror moral purge – it was only later acclaimed for the brilliant cinematic work it was. Not only was it made on a shoestring by a near amateur cast and crew, but it mixed its horror with a zany comedy element inspired by "The 3 stooges" and WB cartoons to create something that had us screaming, hurling, and laughing at the same time. It was film that did not ask to be taken seriously, that knew it was a comedy, yet when the laughs turned to nastiness, they did so twice as hard. The film's creator Sam Raimi has since become an A-list name director who recently gave us Disney's latest blockbuster, while its star Bruce Campbell has become a cult despite a very patchy filmography. Both men, along with co-creator Robert Tapert are the producers of this remake.
Directed by Paraguayan newcomer Fede Alvarez, it walks a strange line between a standard remake and homage. Realising that a straight redo was out of the question (especially recasting Campbell's iconic Ash) and furthermore would eliminate all tension if we knew who died when and who would survive, they created a new set of characters, but magnified one – First victim Mia (Jane Levy) Sister of the resident hunk in the 1981 version, she was then simply "a strange sensitive girl", an artist who felt the evil before everyone else did, and whose hysterical warnings were ignored until she became Demon possessed in the infamous "tree rape" (a version of which still happens here) and turning into an increasingly scabby monster with a line in cruel playground taunts. Here she becomes a recovering Heroin addict who's just seen her mentally ill mother through her terminal illness and OD twice, who is being "locked in" the cabin in the woods by her brother and old college pals to make sure she cold turkeys for good. Her relationship with her brother David (Shiloh Fernandez) is 'troubled' and complicated, so already you have soap opera underpinnings, an annoying trend for modern horror which thinks this is the way to make you care about the characters (it doesn't) often to the detriment of any real scares or thrills. It also generates another horror remake sin – Trying to be too earnest and serious! The originals had a wink in their eye and tongue firmly in cheek, they knew they were crap and had a good time trying to scare you. Not so the remakes, which seem to aiming for some form of Oscar worthy high art and ending up simply dull and un-engaging. This is especially true of "Evil Dead" because of its horror-comedy nature.
Other details are changed. The "Necromicon" book of the dead still exists, but it is no longer Sumerian, is filled with comic book illustrations and big red graffiti telling everyone what is going to happen next, and is linked to European Satanic worship and the Devil. The dreaded words of activation – pilfered from "The Day the Earth Stood Still" – are also different, and are read out by one of the party rather than on the tape recorder. The possessed no longer turn into monsters, and have to resort to idiotic self-mutilation practices (as illustrated in comic book Necromicon) to look suitably nasty. Also a "deadite" can be restored to normal life once freed, though it seems logically impossible.
As with all drastic reinterpretations, some little nods are thrown to fans, starting with the classic Oldsmobile appearing as a derelict in the grounds, then the "Raimi zooms", especially during the zany construction in the shed scene(a defibrillator rather than weapon here) and a final battle involving a chainsaw that also ends up on the end of lone survivors severed wrist. And of course the film's ground-breaking gore is reproduced, but by now buckets of blood, gore, severed limbs, pulped dogs, nail and knife riven corpses, people sawn in half and slimy gruel are not that shocking. What in the original came off as glorious overkill here just becomes tedious overkill, but at least they tried.
So this is essentially a "serious" spin on the same scenario, more homage than remake, never living up to the original but not insulting it either. This is clearly meant to be another story being told, which could even be read as a dream, a psychological manifestation of one character literally beating their demons, highlighted by a fleeting appearance by Ash/Campbell at the end of the credits with his "Groovy!" catchphrase. The original series is safe, and could even be returned to if the makers so wish.
As far as unnecessary remakes go, this could have been worse, even though it has no real reason to exist. Faint praise indeed, but considering the field, still praise.