Hold on to your intestines; something very bad is about to happen.

Rating: 7/10 (3 May 2013)

It's been a while since I saw a genuine horror film (I'm glossing over American Mary, which was horrific for all the wrong reasons), the previous one being last year's superb Sinister, a film that really got under the skin and made my drive home through the dark country lanes a great deal more unnerving then usual. The arrival of Evil Dead, a re-imagining of Sam Rami's 1981 classic, ensured I could put off the first fright of the year no longer. Shattered from a day of chopping wood, I wondered if it would engage or terrify sufficiently to prevent me from dropping off in the Cineworld darkness.
No worries there!
There's more reason to the plot of Fede Alvarez' update, with David (Shiloh Fernandez) and his girlfriend, Natalie (Elizabeth Blackmore) arriving at a woodland cabin to offer moral support to his sister, Mia (Jane Levy), as she goes cold turkey under the supervision of her friends Olivia (Jessica Lucas) and Eric (Lou Taylor Pucci). They discover evidence of some very dark dealings in the basement and, while Mia is busy fighting her own demons, Eric discovers a book secured with barbed wire and bound in human skin, and unwittingly unleashes something very, very demonic indeed.
Evil Dead isn't a film you watch in the hope of mind-blowing performances but, bar the occasional wooden moment, all five principals romp along perfectly convincingly and it doesn't seem right to single out one above the others. Compare the performances here with those in last year's teen blood-flick, Piranha 3DD, and you'll forgive the odd slip from this quintet. When the odd wince moment arrives (David doesn't know where his heart is, for instance), the splatter and gore more than make up for it.
Alvarez, making a spectacular leap into Hollywood as both writer and director in his feature debut AND his first film foray in English, knows how to make bodily fluids spray horrifically. By the time the final credit rolls, we've seen just about every leakage the human body can produce and most at terrific velocity. Put it this way, it's gonna take one heck of a cleaner to sort this mess out!
I'm ashamed to admit that I only got around to watching Raimi's original The Evil Dead a couple of months ago. The friend I watched it with informed me it was the first film to give him nightmares. Thirty-two years later and instead of frights it causes mild hysteria with the prosthetics and effects as rubbery as Bruce Campbell's acting. Alvarez, however, while keeping an eye on the original, has ramped up the horror and gore all the way to 11 and there are more occasions than I care to remember when I found myself pushing back in my seat to escape or half covering my face involuntarily.
People talk flippantly about hairs standing up on the back of the neck, but Evil Dead manages to do just that. It isn't pant-wettingly terrifying but is far more than just 'scary'. Alvarez avoids the cheap shots of building the music and knocking over a vase only for it to be a cute kitten wandering innocently into the house. Here, when the tension builds, hold on to your intestines because something very bad is about to happen. Every time!
The prosthetics and make-up are stunning and matched only by the physical effects. It's a tragedy in the making because, come March 2014, the Oscar for best makeup will probably be won by another 'serious' drama (Les Misérables in 2013, The Iron Lady in 2012 etc.) instead of by Patrick Baxter and his team for Evil Dead. Regardless, I don't think we'll see better amputations and disfigurements on the big screen this year.
The biggest issue with Evil Dead is that it has too many endings and, until we reach the grand finale when the fat lady stops singing and disembowels herself instead, we know that each one is a false conclusion. It's an annoyance but it doesn't detract too much from the overall impact. Two warnings, though: Don't use this as a first date and empty yourself at both ends before you sit down to watch it.
Perhaps the best summary of Evil Dead comes from my companion for the evening, Ben Mears (author of the Tyler May novels) who invented a new word for the occasion: "What the hell did you make me sit through that for? It was s***ifying!"
I don't know about you, but I'm going to sleep with my axe tonight!
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