EVIL DEAD (2013) [Retro] REVIEW
This retro review was written back on April 4th 2013
Evil Dead sets out to be “the most terrifying movie you will ever experience”, and while i don’t believe it to be the scariest movie i have ever seen, it definitely earns its place in the #1 Spot for a bunch of other categories.
This movie is gruesome!
The story is very much the same as the original. Five young adults go to a cabin for the weekend and find the Book of the Dead, read from it and evil comes to take them all. What makes The Evil Dead series special is they go for the gusto with creative camera work and over-the-top gore that is disgustingly satisfying. This movie has got to be the most graphically gory, and one of the more visually disturbing movies i have ever seen. The type where i wanted to turn away but couldn’t. it was brutal, but well done.
What Evil Dead did, to it’s service was it was a lot like the original, but it wasn’t a rehash. There was no character named Ash. They kept visual references, like the necklace but they gave it a different meaning for these characters. They also gave the characters a different motivation for staying at the cabin. Rehab.
Mia, one of the leads played by Jane Levy, is a heroin addict. In an attempt to help, her brother David and friends take her to the cabin to quit cold turkey. When her friend Eric comes across the “Book of the Dead” and begins to read from it, he inadvertently summons demons to the woods around the cabin. Mia becomes possessed by a demon and starts attacking the others and saying she needs to get away from the cabin, but they believe that she is only trying to quit her rehab early.
The deaths that followed were some of the most gnarly i have seen in film. I am not a huge horror fan, i believe fear is a lot more useful when its in the mind, allowing the imagination to take control. Evil Dead succeeds in probably exceeding my imagination in terms of brutality because every death was very harsh, graphic, and original. Each of them also made me cringe and wince, and dare not look away. What these characters endured.. or lack thereof.. was intense.
What differed from the originals is that there was hardly any humor in this film. there was only once or twice that i found myself chuckle, once from a line right after a very intense scene, needing some relief, the other just due to how brutal a moment was. Aside from that, it was straight gory horror.
Evil Dead succeeded in its efforts. It will certainly be one of the best horror movies of this year. As someone not often drawn to these types of movies, I’m rather curious of what the series has to come.
If your a fan of the original, definitely stay for the stinger at the end of the credits!!
4 out of 5
