Evil Dead Remake: An Entertaining Splatter Fest

I'm usually opposed to remakes for the obvious reasons, and there are some I'll always refuse to see (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) because the originals hold such a special place in my heart I can't bear to see them tampered with, but I do have to admit that there are instances when remakes use new film technology or draw on recent events to update the story in ways that that preserve the spirit of the original while also taking it in new and interesting directions.  This was the case with Alexandre Aja's remake of The Hills Have Eyes, which ties the mutations of the film's killers to nuclear testing and includes an especially eerie scene in a small test neighborhood populated with mannequins.  Although Rob Zombie's first Halloween remake was terrible (Zombie, of all people, should know that Michael Myers is much more horrifying when there is no explanation for why he kills), the sequel is one of the best horror movies of the past ten years.  Zombie preserved the original story's theme of family, but added his own disturbing twist, and the Michael Myers of his Halloween sequel is one of the most brutal killers to stalk the screen.  It was because of remakes like these that Vicki was able to convince me to give the Evil Dead remake a chance, and I'm glad she did.

It tells the same basic story as Sam Raimi's original, but differs in the details.  In a welcome change from the standard horror movie plot, the characters come together in a cabin in the woods not to get drunk, high, and laid, but to help their friend Mia break her heroine addiction, so they are much more likable than the standard zombie fodder (I should add here that this was also the case in Raimi's original, whose characters are couples out for a weekend of fun, but never become annoying to the point where we cheer for the zombies).  While suffering from withdrawal, Mia starts screaming about an awful smell in the cabin, and as her friends try to find its source, they discover a trap door leading down to a basement, where they find dead cats hanging on the walls and, of course, the Book of the Dead, bound in stitched skin and tied shut with barbed wire.  Without telling the others, one character finds the book, and despite warnings to the contrary, reads it and summons the sleeping demons.

 

Through a re-creation of the original film's infamous rape-by-the-woods scene, Mia is the first to become possessed, which enables writer/director Fede Alvarez to liken drug addiction to demonic possession and leave his other characters convinced that Mia's acts of pissing in her pants and claiming, "You're all going to die tonight," are extreme symptoms of withdrawal.  These moments also invoke William Friedkin's The Exorcist, and initially had me thinking more of this film than the original Evil Dead.  However, when the gore fest begins, the spirt of Raimi's original is alive and well, but whereas the gore in the original is often unintentionally funny owing to its low budget, the remake's is gut-wrenching.  In fact, this Evil Dead is probably the goriest movie I've ever seen in a theater.  The bloodbath contains two different scenes in which characters must perform self-amputations to save themselves.  Without spoiling anything, I can also add that it features the chainsaw gore that viewers have come to expect from Evil Dead movies, and it has a satisfying ending that sets up for a sequel in a way that doesn't leave you feeling cheated.

 

My only minor complaint is that the remake lacks the well-developed mythology about the Book of the Dead that helps make the original films so enjoyable, but this small problem is more than compensated for by the buckets of gore that leave you wanting a shower.  Evil Dead reminded me of how much fun it can be to see a horror movie on the big screen, and the only reason not to see it is if you can't stomach the gore.  I know promoters like to claim that horror movies make viewers vomit or run screaming from the theater, and I'm always skeptical of these claims, but I have heard a similar claim about Evil Dead from a less biased source:  one of my high school students said a girl sitting next to him threw up in her popcorn box.