Effects? Check. Required elements? Check. Characters? ...

Rating: 7/10 (12 April 2013)

Evil Dead is just one of those movies that can't be reproduced. Playing it with the same tone as the original is only possible with an artificially low budget, and audiences would simply guffaw at the attempts to reproduce a delightfully twisted B-movie. Playing it as a true horror movie is the only apparent option, and that leaves you with droves of viewers complaining about a film that has 'none of the charm that made the original film memorable.'
So when tasked with directing Evil Dead, what do you do? Well, you're probably going to play it pretty straight and gritty as a horror movie. But what do you need to do to make it work? I'd say there are three things you need: (1) practical visual effects, (2) opaque homage, and (3) refreshed characters.
(1) was a success. We've got a single scene with some CGI-looking splash as a car crosses a creek, but beyond that the visual effects are spot on. There are the gory and over-the-top moments, but there are also little things that are creepy or cringe-worthy, but it all looks like it was actually captured on film. For a film with so much shock value, I was actually surprised at how well tension was maintained throughout the film, and how the threat of pending violence was just as important as the bloodbath that had already occurred.
(2) was done pretty well, too. We know the premise for Evil Dead: twenty-somethings spend the night in a cabin, find a book that wakes a demon, and are gradually possessed and dismembered. Someone will lose a hand, the way home will disappear, there's a chainsaw, a fruit cellar, and a creeping forest. Evil Dead keeps those elements intact, but it keeps the plot from being transparent to anyone who's seen the original. It stops and starts, it moves elements around, it plays with the audience's expectations .
(3) is were this movie struggles. Casting a Bruce Campbell-like lead doesn't fit here, so we've got five average-Joe characters instead. Unfortunately, none of them are particularly interesting, and all but one of them are played hammily. I thought the drug addiction was a nice idea, and I appreciated how it played into the first third of the film. Unfortunately, it took a backseat to demonic possession, and we never got to see Mia struggling with both addiction and hellspawn. I suppose having 5 uninteresting characters does have one benefit. Rather than getting attached to a single protagonist, we start wishing for everyone to be possessed so they can wreak new and interesting havoc on the others. It's a slight positive, but it still doesn't make up for the lack of any solid performances.
I really enjoyed this movie, but I enjoyed it on a pretty base level. The production and tone were enough to make it good, the ideas incorporated were enough to plant seeds of potential greatness, but the lack of any worthwhile characters keeps this in the B-movie range for me.