A great ''re-imagining'', not ''remake''

Rating: 8/10 (24 August 2013)

I would like to get this out of the way in saying that this film is not a remake, its a re-imagining. it takes the basic concept of Evil Dead and uses it for its own purposes, never truly changing much, but expanding upon other parts that the original didn't and looking at other things differently whilst maintaining that core concept of Evil Dead. And boy was it fun to watch.
For starters, the practical effects were top notch, absolutely fantastic. The licking of the Stanley knife, the woman cutting her arm off with a electric meat knife, Mia getting her arm trapped underneath the car, the nurse Olivia ripping her face apart with a blade of glass, it all looked so good that it made me cringe and feel slightly sick, which shows that it works very well. In comparison, the small amount of CG that they did use felt quite awkward and silly compared to the practical effects, but very very little was used, so my complaints are minimal on this.
The characters, quite honestly, weren't all that great. the only person's name i remember is Mia, mainly because she is for the most part, the central focus of the movie, but thanks to IMDb's casting list, i now know the names. Mia's brother David, is quite useless for most of the film and is quite honestly boring for a fair majority of the movie. Eric, the guy in the glasses, i liked a bit more because he was actually trying to take action, but i spent the majority of the movie wondering when the hell he was going to finally die. He is stabbed in the shoulder with glass (which is 'repaired'' with duct tape), stabbed repeatedly in the eye with a hypodermic needle, shot at least around 30 times with a nail gun, which at one point, nails his arm to his chest. Then he is attacked with a crowbar, smashing his hand in half (which he also ''repairs'' with duct tape)and hit a couple of times over the head with the crowbar, which i thought would surely kill him. nope. He still lives until being stabbed in the stomach with the Stanley knife a little later on, where he finally decides that death is a good idea. He was one resilient b**tard. The nurse Olivia is trying to take action with Mia's drug problem, but doesn't last that long and is soon offed in a pretty nasty fashion. David's girlfriend, Natalie has about 4 or 5 lines in this movie, not really featuring to the point that i actually forgot she was there. Overall, the characters, i couldn't really care for due to the lack of development for them, but the actress who played Mia i believe did a very fine job in the movie, being the only character i could give at least a single sh*t about. The exposition in the beginning of the movie is pretty laughable as well, but i believe its just trying to move things a bit quicker, but yet somehow, the movie felt slow in quite a few places, so indeed, the pacing was a bit off in this one.
Now for comparison to the original, which is one of my favourite films. obviously, it doesn't hold up the original and i didn't expect it to, so it was a good choice to move away from the original and make something else with the same concept. I loved the references, the Olds 88 that Mia is sat on in the beginning, the porch swing out the front of the cabin, the evil camera view, the cutting the arm off moment, Mia losing her arm as well, the necklace, the boomstick and goddamn it the chainsaw. A big smile spread across my face when that appeared and it was not disappointing in its usage. The one reference which i have mixed feelings about is the tree scene, which they somehow make more horrifying that the original did, to which i just sat there and cringed the entire time it happened. But the one that i got most excited about was right after the credits. Ash Williams in the dark, gruffly says the word ''Groovy'' then turns to the camera and thats it, but that is all i needed to get extremely excited. The chin is returning for another round with the Deadites and i cannot wait.
Overall, this was a fun film. Different, but yet the same as the original and works pretty well. Its not really scary, but incredibly gory and is not for the faint hearted when it does get bloody. The characters,as i said, couldn't care about all that much due to lack of development beyond ''hey, I'm your brother and your my sister'' or ''we used to hang out years ago'', but what the movie did get right, it did quite well. its creepy, slightly unsettling, disturbing and i would definitely say worth the watch, especially for classic Evil Dead fans, so go see it if you haven't. Now if you'll excuse me, i'm going to go wait very eagerly for Army of Darkness 2.