Evil Dead

Note the lack of ‘the’ in the title of this post. I did plan to watch the original again, then watch this 2013 reboot, but rental gods conspired against me and I have come at it all wonky. No matter though, it worked out well because I dont have a great memory and I was not in a ‘lets compare’ mood. I remember enough though, and the original certainly didnt see a band of teenagers head into the woods for a DIY drug rehab session. The main consequence of this is that the whole thing can be read as allegorical of the trials which face anyone who decides to go cold turkey. For those less inclined towards slightly dubious filmic readings its also a great excuse for some ‘it must be because of the drugs’ dialogue – everyone knows you turn into a killer when you are coming off drugs right? There are enough nods to the original here that I didnt feel like someone had just made a horror film and cashed in on a good name, it was never going to be ‘The’ Evil Dead, but its ‘an’ Evil Dead film. The gore is outstanding, spectacularly over the top and very well done. It really made me lament the rise of CGI gore, this old school spatter stuff is so much more entertaining. I can look past the fact that you can kind of tell when people have their arms hidden behind their backs, so their ‘hand’ can be cut off. The only issue here was that it just isnt scary. The film is pretty short, and could really have done with a little more at the beginning to build the tension, but because we are straight in with the cutting off limbs and puke/blood/piss (yes that happens) everywhere I didnt jump once. This was always going to be a difficult film to get right, die hard fans of the original were never going to like it, and if you’d managed to somehow miss the first one you’d probably think this was overkill (literally), I liked it though, and for all its lack of real scares it had an awful lot of great horror moments. Now, next time I decide to stop taking crystal meth I will be sure to head down to the woods….