Review: Evil Dead (2013)

First thing to note is I like the original Evil Dead trilogy, I think all three are great films and I count the second one as one of my all-time favourites. But I don’t love them, they’re not sacred to me so the idea of a remake, while seemingly silly when first announced, didn’t mean that much to me. I would’ve easily seen this on DVD on streaming when it was released but then the praise starting coming in, and my interest peaked. So I took another trip to a cabin in the woods and what I found was surprisingly great.

Following the basic structure of the original films but still telling it’s own story, Evil Dead finds five friends, David, his sister Mia, his girlfriend Natalie, schoolteacher Eric and nurse Olivia make the journey to David’s family cabin in order to help Mia quit her drug habit cold turkey. Already that’s a point to the original, the drug kicking plot line is a much better device than the original’s because it means when Mia loses her shit they think it’s just the drugs and it also gives them a reason to stay longer which makes the reason they can’t escape more plausible.

Now obviously the whole point of this film is to watch teens get brutally slaughtered and you do get that but the way everything comes about, once more I think it’s an improvement on the original. Rather than a tape recorder reading the Book Of The Dead, they actually find the Book itself and natural curiosity has them read the Book, this works in its favour because it gives them a way to stop the evil but also it describes what’s happening as a ritual, a way for a resurrection to occur and the idea that dark forces are working their own thing is pretty damn creepy.

The characters were good for the most part, none of them were Ash quality but thankfully the film never picks one of them to be Ash. And while no-one did a bad job, everyone was well-cast, there was a couple under-written characters, Natalie is a pretty nothing character while Olivia’s ‘I’m a nurse, I know what I’m doing’ routine was fairly one-note. But two characters out of five don’t make this a failure in that department and the other three were good people.

Schoolteacher Eric was a bitter and cynical man, as one could expect from teaching high-schoolers. His mind works on logic and curiosity so the idea of benevolent evil means jack-shit to him. Because of this when it’s him that opens and reads the book it doesn’t feel like a dumb decision, his teacher instincts allowed him to study what he found. He’s also the first to realise he fucked up so when it gets down to it he’s ready to make things right, whatever the cost.

David, a mechanic living in Chicago and now returned home for his sister, could almost be the straight man but not quite. It’s never fully explained but it’s shown that David left home for some reason, leaving his friends and his family behind, leaving a young Mia with their sick and mentally deranged mother. Because of this, as well as the fact he never saw his mother again, David is carrying a lot of guilt, he doesn’t want to abandoned his family again and right now Mia is his family. When Eric tells David to save Mia they have to kill her he’s hesitant about it, the guilt, the thought of murdering his sister, losing his family, that’s all flaws about David that hold him back and make him a good character.

But far and away this film belongs to Jane Levy as Mia. Girl is a fuckin revelation in this film, I’ve not seen any of her past work but here she is something else. Firstly her portrayal of a cold turkey junkie was great, not only in her freak-outs and screaming but also in her little twitches and just angry disposition. Not only that, but since Mia is the first to turn she’s pretty much the main antagonist of the film, at least the one we can see, and she does a great job with that as well, being truly despicable and disgusting in her actions, she’s twisted in mind and body. It does feel very much like Linda Blair in the Exorcist and while that hurts the film slightly it’s praise to Levy’s performance because she owned the role.

Something to note is that the drug taking is a great character aspect as well as a good plot device, aside from her friends not believing her it also shows that Mia’s will is weak, hence why the demon’s choosing her first makes sense, and the same can be said for the fact that Eric and Olivia tell David Mia O.D.’ed once and was legally dead, she’s been to the other side making her, once again, the optimum target.

The direction was solid, it’s not as good as Raimi’s I’ll get that out the way quickly. Raimi made his film was a manic energy that fitted into the unnerving horror and the insane comedy and the two mixed together brilliantly. Here it’s a straight-up horror, very little comedic about it, that’s my biggest complaint, that for an Evil Dead film it didn’t take a laugh at itself. That being said, for a horror film it was actually really good, there was a good number of scenes that scared me, mostly jump-scares but they were used sparingly enough to be effective.

Something that I will give this film over the original, in terms of direction, is the look, particularly the lighting. The whole film looks incredible, very dark, very dingy and just horrible. The film is set over one day so as it goes on the light gets darker resulting in more and more surrounding light sources such as torches or fire, the result is a film that uses light to its advantage, keeping things hidden and out of sight until needed. The last twenty minutes of the film looked amazingly hellish and it fitted what the film was going for.

But of course, I would be amiss if I was to ignore the gore. Sweet Deadite Jesus. This film goes all out when it comes to the red stuff, it was more bloody than it was gory but the gore was strong as well. Not to spoil anything but what we see, including amputations, tongue splitting and limb-ripping, was all great to watch and did remind me of the original but with the bigger budget it allowed more gore to be shown. Using the practical effect instead of pure CGI was a great touch, not only as a nod to the original - this film has nothing on Raimi’s effect but are still great - but also to really sure the insane amount of bloody carnage and hammer home the sick nature of these evil dead creatures.

Overall, I liked it, I liked it a lot. In fact with my order of the first three being 2, 1, 3, I think I’d put the remake on the same level as the first film, maybe even surpassing it. The plot is improved upon, the characters are good with a few missteps and while it does lack Raimi’s manic energy and fun nature this film is it’s own beast and it does what it sets out to do. I had a great time with this one and it’s a wonderful addition to the franchise.

8.5/10