← Back to Reviews
in
Evil Dead, 2013
Mia (Jane Levy) has decided to swear off drugs, for real this time, guys! She is joined at a remote cabin by her friends Olivia (Jessica Lucas) and Eric (Lou Taylor Pucci), as well as by her brother David (Shiloh Fernandez) and his girlfriend Natalie (Elizabeth Blackmore). But things go south very quickly when Eric discovers a mysterious book full of horrific images and goes ahead and says an incantation. Soon the friends find themselves under siege and forced to defend themselves from demonic possession.
I'll maybe start off by saying that I don't love the Evil Dead films quite as much as many of my horror friends seem to. Don't get me wrong: they're fine. Guys--they're fine.
But I'm not as attached to the franchise, and so the idea of a reboot/remake/whatever doesn't gut me in the same way as hearing that they're revamping Black Christmas or Terror Train.
I really enjoyed this film. The different encounters and deaths and mutilations are delightfully gnarly. Even when you know what's coming, such as when a character flips to a page in the necronomicon and we see an illustration of a woman who has cut off her own face, they still land with a punch thanks to the strong visual effects. This is a movie where blood flows and gristle flies, and the story stays just grounded enough that it doesn't descend into parody or full out comedy. There are also some real gross-out moments that hit in a visceral way, like a character getting stabbed in the face with a hypodermic needle.
I also liked the way that the plot is set up here. We are given Mia's drug addiction and a character backstory of family mental health issues that set the stage for explaining why characters wouldn't cut and run when things get weird. Mia starts seeing things and, yeah, she is in withdrawal. The past history and tensions between Mia and David set the stage in a way that adds a lot of weight to the events that happen. The character dynamics here just worked for me. That also includes giving Mia more of a character and an arc. The film opts to keep the disturbing sexual assault sequence---something that in the original film felt more mean-spirited than funny--but the additional character depth makes it far more palatable.
Finally, I thought that the look and specifically the color palette of the movie was really nice. It doesn't try to look like a film from the 80s, but nor does it look fully modern and slick. There's a dreamy nature to the way that the colors evolve as the whole thing goes to hell. When the last act arrives and everything is red, red, red, I was giddy.
Good times!
Evil Dead, 2013
Mia (Jane Levy) has decided to swear off drugs, for real this time, guys! She is joined at a remote cabin by her friends Olivia (Jessica Lucas) and Eric (Lou Taylor Pucci), as well as by her brother David (Shiloh Fernandez) and his girlfriend Natalie (Elizabeth Blackmore). But things go south very quickly when Eric discovers a mysterious book full of horrific images and goes ahead and says an incantation. Soon the friends find themselves under siege and forced to defend themselves from demonic possession.
I'll maybe start off by saying that I don't love the Evil Dead films quite as much as many of my horror friends seem to. Don't get me wrong: they're fine. Guys--they're fine.
But I'm not as attached to the franchise, and so the idea of a reboot/remake/whatever doesn't gut me in the same way as hearing that they're revamping Black Christmas or Terror Train.
I really enjoyed this film. The different encounters and deaths and mutilations are delightfully gnarly. Even when you know what's coming, such as when a character flips to a page in the necronomicon and we see an illustration of a woman who has cut off her own face, they still land with a punch thanks to the strong visual effects. This is a movie where blood flows and gristle flies, and the story stays just grounded enough that it doesn't descend into parody or full out comedy. There are also some real gross-out moments that hit in a visceral way, like a character getting stabbed in the face with a hypodermic needle.
I also liked the way that the plot is set up here. We are given Mia's drug addiction and a character backstory of family mental health issues that set the stage for explaining why characters wouldn't cut and run when things get weird. Mia starts seeing things and, yeah, she is in withdrawal. The past history and tensions between Mia and David set the stage in a way that adds a lot of weight to the events that happen. The character dynamics here just worked for me. That also includes giving Mia more of a character and an arc. The film opts to keep the disturbing sexual assault sequence---something that in the original film felt more mean-spirited than funny--but the additional character depth makes it far more palatable.
Finally, I thought that the look and specifically the color palette of the movie was really nice. It doesn't try to look like a film from the 80s, but nor does it look fully modern and slick. There's a dreamy nature to the way that the colors evolve as the whole thing goes to hell. When the last act arrives and everything is red, red, red, I was giddy.
Good times!