When Cabin in the Woods was released I had
hoped that it would challenge movie producers to make better horror movies or
to at least improve on the cabin-in-the -woods horror genre. If the remake of Evil Dead is any indication of what’s to come then clearly those
hopes were misplaced. The poster has the
balls to boast that this film is “The most terrifying film you will ever
experience.” To that I will simply
retort to the producers “Don’t go writing checks your clichéd movie can’t
cash.”
A group of friends, Mia (Jane Levy), her estranged
brother David (Shiloh Fernandez), and three other characters, whose names
aren’t worth remembering, decide to make a trip to a cabin in the woods in an
effort to get a drug-addicted Mia to quit her dependence cold turkey. Eventually they notice a foul smell coming
from the cabin’s cellar which turns out to be full of animal carcasses and an
ominous looking book covered in barbed wire.
Despite the book quite literally warning them not to read it, one of the
idiots presses on anyway which of course summons a demon and all hell breaks
loose (figuratively and literally). Mia
is the only one in the group with the common sense to be frightened but the
others simply chalk it up to symptoms of withdrawal and ignore her. They don’t really begin to notice that something
is amiss with Mia until a dog turns up dead and then begins to burn her face
off in the scalding hot shower.
What follows is a level of gore and violence I haven’t
seen since the Saw series (and that’s
not a compliment). Like many movies
before it Evil Dead appears to not
understand that there can be a fine line between scary and needlessly gruesome. The whole thing starts out rather promising
but quickly devolves into the same junk that Cabin in the Woods made fun of last year. I might’ve forgiven this if the remake had
brought anything new to the table but instead it makes so many references to
the original that the entire picture was a constant reminder that there was a
much better version of this I could’ve been watching instead. What is perhaps the most confusing thing about
this movie is that Sam Raimi approved of it so much that he became one of the
film’s producers. I’m not really sure
what he thought was so special about it since it’s mostly just a carbon copy of
his work except with a bigger budget, almost nonexistent creativity and this
time Bruce Campbell is nowhere to be found.
I will admit though that there is one thing Evil Dead has going for it, and that’s
the ending. I was legitimately surprised
by it which is not usually something I can usually say about a horror movie. It’s the only real significant change
director/co-screenwriter Fede Alverez made to the original and it almost
manages to save this movie. It kind of
makes me wonder just how much better this could’ve been if it been approached
with a shred of originality. Even with
the new ending, however, we still wind up in the same place as the
original.
I don’t usually find myself clamoring to see any horror
movie and especially not remakes. However,
since Raimi appeared to believe in it so much, I was willing to give this one
the benefit of the doubt and chose to believe that it would make something
interesting. Instead all I got was more
of the same, along with bitter disappointment to add insult to injury.
Grade: C
