OK Admission time. I had the original Evil Dead in this slot and was looking at the original list and went do I really like that movie more than the remake and then I asked myself a simple question. I have a two hour slot in my schedule and I can choice between the two which movie do I watch? And that is why this one is lower than the other. I am not alone with that thinking seeing as IMDb gave this a 6.5/10 and Rotten Tomatoes gave it smidge less with 63%. Released in 2013 with the backing of the original guys which helped with the advertising of the remake. It was made on a small budget (for the year) $17m but it did go and on to recoup $97.5m which has to be seen as a success. Directed by Fede Álvarez who had built up a reputation for using CGI and he came out very early on an explained that they won’t be using CGI on this movie with the exception of touching bits up. This version starred Jane Levy, Shiloh Fernandez, Lou Taylor Pucci, Jessica Lucas & Elizabeth Blackmore. With Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell co produced with Robert Tapert. The plot is similar to the original but with a few changes including one highlight of having one of the usual dumb-ass moves for a horror movie in it.
This movies starts with a bit of a back story with the cabin being used for a sacrifice of a girl that turns out to be a demon. Many years later David, his younger sister Mia, along with his girlfriends Natalie, at a cabin they meet his friends Eric and Olivia. With the whole group staying in the cabin to help support Mia to overcome her addiction to heroin. The cabin’s cellar (where the first girl was killed) is not the nicest place with rotting corpses of animals a shotgun and a book called ‘Naturom Demonto’ so they bring the book up to the main cabin. Here it is – despite lots of warnings about not reading allowed from the book that was bound in barbed wire Eric decides to untie and read allow from the book with warning written in blood but who needs to follow warnings. (insert Trump joke here). Now the brown stuff is going to hit the fan. Mia starts seeing the girl from before but they believe she is experiencing withdrawal and don’t believe her. Mia decided to run taking the car and crashing it and runs into the woods, which if you know the first story you DO NOT want to be in the woods around this cabin. Now being possessed Mia starts to attack the other members of the group and I think that is enough of the set up to let you know what to expect.
This is a fair representation of the original movie this is also a pretty good horror movie as it goes. There is some very spooky scenes along with the scares, where the original maybe showing some signs of age this is a suitable substitute for an entertaining evening. The scares are there and the lack of CGI does make this a bit more scary as the scenes are being played out as it was at the time. I will not be able to pass this without mentioning the tongue scene and going eeuwwwww and that poor actress getting blood spew in her face. I am sure she has had better days on the job. This could well of been the biggest movie in the actors career to date but to my knowledge none have gone onto to super stardom but they have continued with their careers. You could also argue that this movie’s success brought Bruce and Sam together to discuss a fourth Evil Dead movie that then morphed into what was to become Ash v’s Evil Dead which ran for three series until Bruce said he was too old to spend the day knee deep in cold fake blood in a basement somewhere rather than being cancelled. Will there ever be a fourth movie in the story I would assume not but I can live with the fact they served up three great movies and a remake worthy of the Evil Dead name.
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