Evil Dead is the rare remake that earns its pedigree.
In the past few years, the onslaught of tepid horror remakes drowning Hollywood has made brand recognition more important to the moviegoing experience than the movie itself.
As such, it’s initially hard to think of this year’s Evil Dead remake as anything more than a brainless “dark and gritty” retread of familiar territory.
However, it turns out Evil Dead is a fantastic time at the movies. Unlike most remakes, this one adds something to the overall legacy of the cult classic film series it’s based on — it’s an update in which the focus of production is on the quality of the experience and not on producers’ greed.
The plot is nearly identical to the original. It’s the classic tale of a group of five pretty young men and women trapped in the woods in a creepy cabin. One member of the group finds a “Book of the Dead” and opens it, causing several members of the party to become demonically possessed and murderous. Things go south from there.
A few modern flourishes and liberties are taken with the plot to keep things interesting, and it’s well-paced enough that it’s easy to forget how predictable everything becomes.
Then again, the relative predictability is half the fun of Evil Dead, which forms as an odd companion piece with last year’s sardonic genre deconstruction The Cabin in the Woods. Both films play on viewers’ horror movie expectations, and where The Cabin in the Woods masterfully poked fun at those tropes, Evil Dead simply relishes in them to an equally entertaining degree.
There is a deft incorporation of some of the original series’ sillier elements into the remake, as well. In Evil Dead II, protagonist Ash has his hand possessed, and the subsequent battle is more slapstick than horror.
In the remake, a similar scenario is played out in much more gruesome detail, yet instead of coming off as a fad-chasing attempt at self-seriousness, first-time director and co-writer Fede Alvarez (known for his viral YouTube short film Panic Attack!) finds a whole new way to make the scene painfully funny.
There is an undeniable strain of humor, between the dirty words spilling out of the demons’ mouths and the perpetually more grotesque forms of violence and mutilation. The tone may be altogether different from the original, but the remake does not succumb to the same stale tragedies that befall many of its contemporaries.
Dead they may be, but the characters and moods in Evil Dead are alive with fear.
Jane Levy (Fun Size) delivers an awesome performance as Mia, a character who (not to spoil any plot twists) requires a wide range of acting chops. The cinematography in the film is also surprisingly nuanced — shards of light cracking through the thick fog of the forest can be just as unsettling as watching a girl cut her own tongue in half (though not nearly as upsetting).
The true stars of the film, however, are the special effects. Instead of relying on lifeless computer generated imagery, Evil Dead uses practical effects for nearly every big gross-out set piece.
Dismemberments, torrents of bloody vomit, boiling skin — all of it exists on screen through the use of convincing makeup, puppets and camera trickery. There are only a handful of shots in the entire film that use computer animation.
In a sense, the use of practical effects is the greatest homage Alvarez and crew could have made to Sam Raimi’s (Oz the Great and Powerful) original films. Everything from the infamous thorn bush scene to the reintroduction of the series’ central tool of demon destruction — the chainsaw — has been handled with care and filmed with striking precision.
Despite being filled with some of the most over-the-top gore you’ll see committed to film this year, Evil Dead is also one of the most viscerally enjoyable genre films of the year so far.
diversionsdbk@gmail.com
