Year: 2013
Director: Fede Alvarez
Country: US
Language: English
For me, the original Evil Dead Trilogy (Evil Dead, Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness) was among the greatest film trilogies ever produced. The films were absolutely hilarious, full of camp, bad special effects and terrible puns. Ash (Bruce Campbell) was a mockery of the typical male hero, an overly masculine character who shouted catchphrase after catchphrase, saving the typical heroine from certain doom. In 2013 a remake of the original Evil Dead was made...and it's quite different.
The film consists of Five twenty-something friends become holed up in a remote cabin. When they discover a Book of the Dead, they unwittingly summon up dormant demons living in the nearby woods, which possess the youngsters in succession until only one is left intact to fight for survival.
While Evil Dead is technically a "remake", the only similarity it has with the original film was the plot. The director of this film clearly had a different vision for what the film should be. It's much darker & more serious than Sam Raimi's film, this film is not trying to be satire in anyway. However the Director does try to imitate some of Raimi's shot's from the original film and it feels, for lack of a better word, out of place and awkward. It's a creative film that struggles to find its individualism.
The gore in this film is extremely hard to watch, yet there's so much of it that it becomes desensitizing and almost comical. Evil Dead feels and looks like every other big budget horror film, it's almost as if I could see the exact same movie if I rented (insert modern horror title). It's probably unfair to compare this Raimi's film, but one charm that it has which this film doesn't is the surrealistic aspect. There are not just demonic possessions and disfigurement, you really get a sense that the characters are going insane via odd images like a mirror turning into water. This Evil Dead is JUST about episodes of demonic possession and feels disjointed.
In conclusion, fans of the original Evil Dead will be disappointed in this film as well as people who have never seen the original. The characters are absolutely boring and forgettable, which drains your investment in them. The reliance on shock gore is rather annoying, though it's impressive to see such an unapologetic film in 2013. It's strange that the film did not get an NC-17 rating. Piss on it! 1.5/5
No comments:
Post a Comment