Evil Drab

Rating: 2/10 (9 October 2013)

After being thoroughly pleased with the original Evil Dead I had high hopes of enjoying the apparent "superior" sequel. Well so much for those hopes. What was encountered was an insulting and badly made rehash.
The first insult is that we are supposed to forget the events from the first film as our protagonist Ash proceeds to make the same mistakes he had prior. The "sequel" is a misnomer, this is a remake. One that forgoes the character development, suspense and cleverness of the first for a film that gets more idiotic with each passing minute.
Further insults to the viewer ensue with multiple plot-holes, moronic one-liners and attempts at slapstick humour that fall flat, dead flat. Camera tricks that were used well in the first film are now beaten like a dead horse, scenes recreated without any of the suspense, horror or scare factor from the original Dead.
I am convinced that the makers of this film went in with a vague idea of what they wanted to create in lieu of a script and plot. Bruce Cambell hamming it up for much of the movie felt like ad lib, the dependence on he and his bad one-liners alone a terrible mistake and it's like at some point they realised this: "Hey, let's just film Bruce goofing off for a few hours, add some zombies and a sh*t-ton of fake blood and we have a movie!". "Oh sh*t, we're gonna need a few more mindless kids to kill off so let's just throw in some characters that really don't make any sense or shouldn't realistically be there but what the hell, this is a dumb zombie flick that makes no sense and they're gonna die anyways!"
And the final insult being no real pay-off in the end. What we are left with is the equivalent to a "To Be Continued" from a multi-part weekly TV show. But instead of hanging on to the edge of our seats waiting for the next instalment, leaves us dissatisfied with no want to see the conclusion. This is one prequel rather left forgotten.