EVIL DEAD (2013)

DIRECTED by Fede Alvarez.

SCREENPLAY by Fede Alvarez & Rodo Sayagues based on "The Evil Dead" by Sam Raimi.

STARRING  - Jane Levy as Mia Allen,  Shiloh Fernández as David Allen,  Lou Taylor Pucci as Eric,  Jessica Lucas as Olivia,  Elizabeth Blackmore as Natalie,  Randal Wilson as The Abomination,  Rupert Degas as Demon voice.

PLOT - Several months ago in a small rural town, a young girl was possesed by a demon. The townsfolk take the young girl into the basement of a secluded log cabin in the local woods in an attempt to exorcise her. The attempt fails and the girl's father sets her on fire and shoots her dead.

A few months later, the cabin becomes temporary home to another young girl who is battling her own demons. Mia Allen is a Heroin addict and she has come to the seclusion of the cabin to go cold turkey in an attempt to purge herself of her addiction. She is accompanied by her brother David, his girlfriend Natalie, thier dog Grandpa and thier friends Eric and Olivia who are all there to help Mia in her darkest hour.

Noticing the smell of rotting flesh inside the cabin, David goes into the cellar and finds multiple animal corpses hanging from the ceiling and a strange ancient looking book called The Naturum Demonto.

The geeky Eric becomes obsessed with translating the book and reads out an incantation which releases an evil force.

Very soon, Mia becomes possessed by the force and one by one her friends begin to fall. It falls to David to try to save his sister's soul and survive multiple attacks from his demonically possessed friends, worse than that something else is coming...an even greater evil...the time of the Abomination is near and the skies will rain blood upon the Earth...

DIALOUGE  - Deadite voice - "You will die! Like the others before you, one by one - WE WILL TAKE YOU !"

Mia - "You're all going to die tonight..."

PERFORMANCES  -  Evil Dead 2013 is NOT a remake of the 1981 original as some people would have you believe, it's set in the same continuity (arguably) and is meant to be seen more as a parallel story, an Evil Dead for a new generation with callbacks to the old. As such there is no Bruce Campbell/Ash Williams in this movie (although he does make a post end credits cameo). 

This lack of the series's main defining iconic lead character is deeply felt it has to be said. Ash's absence leaves a hole at the heart of this film. I'm not for a moment saying that it's impossible to tell a story set in the Evil Dead universe without Ash (Theres several equally good characters in the TV show that where strong enough to take the story to it's next stage), but if you do decide to do an Evil Dead story without Ash then you better make sure your replacement characters are up to the task. Sadly, the characters in this film aren't.

It's not the actors fault (they're all very good), it's just that the new characters don't have the same charm, they're not as well developed or as interesting.

Case in point is Mia (Jane Levy), rather than actual character development she's instead saddled with this backstory about Heroin addiction. This defines the character for the first third of the film and there are way, way, WAY too many scenes of her just droning on about her addiction issues. It's like the filmmakers just put it in there to be "edgy". It slows the entire story up for no good reason and adds nothing to the character. 

Mia then gets possessed and becomes a Deadite for most of the movie before reverting to her human self for an arse kicking Ash style rampage at the end. Levy is great as a Deadite (possibly the most unnerving one since Deadite Linda in the original) and her Deadite killing chainsaw vengence at the end is memorably OTT. But it's all too little too late, we don't feel like we know Mia as she's been either going through cold turkey or demonic possession throughout the entire film, so by the end we don't really care about this girl that we've barely met. A shame because Levy is a good actress and could have delivered more given the chance.

At first Mia's brother David (Shiloh Fernández) looks like he's being set up to be the new Ash Williams. There are many parallels to our much missed hero, the most obvious one being that, like Ash, David has to endure seeing his own sister become possessed by the evil force. They even dress David in a similar style to Ash (blue denim shirt), they really couldn't make the similarities more obvious if they tried. The problem is that Fernández is no Campbell (he doesn't have the charisma to carry off being the pseudo-Ash) and that the character of David isn't written as being particularly interesting in the first place. Of course all this set up goes out of the window just before the end of the film when David heroically sacrifices his life to save Mia.

The rest of the characters are all fairly forgettable. None of the actors give a bad performance but they don't really have a lot to work with. Jessica Lucas as Olivia shows some promise (her character comes over as being a lot more likeable than the navel gazing Mia) but is soon possessed and killed off (once again - GREAT Deadite though).

Elizabeth Blackmore plays Natalie who gets a great scene recalling Evil Dead 2 where her arm becomes possessed, unlike that film, this isn't played for laughs though and the scene is genuinely disturbing and unpleasant. 

Finally we get Lou Taylor Pucci as Eric, David's geeky best friend. He's basically a nerdier version of Scotty from the original and suffers a similar fate (bleeding to death from injuries that he's sustained before coming back as a Deadite). Yet more parallels to the original...

These call outs to the original series are nice little touches and its fun spotting them but ultimately all they succeded in doing was making me wish I was watching the original trilogy again.

SFX - Lots of makeup effects obviously, but this time round the Deadites are a bit more subtle looking. They're less overtly horrific (less monster-like) but more creepy and unnerving - what you lose in one way, you gain in another. Perhaps the most creepily effective is Mia when she's possessed...

Definitely a face that will haunt your nightmares. The other Deadites are all effective too...

Perhaps the blandest Deadite ever committed to film is Eric, he just doesn't work somehow...

He just looks like a bog standard Zombie, and whilst I know that the Deadites are technically Zombies they've always been somehow a bit more inventive looking and original than the standard Zombie design.

Theres quite an impressive scene where a possessed girl gets burnt alive. Director Alvarez has gone on record as saying they hardly used any CGI in the making of the film, but I reckon this is one instance where it was unavoidable - you can't just go setting young actresses on fire willy nilly afterall...

Speaking of fire, theres lots of really impressive pyrotechnics in the latter half of the film when the cabin explodes and burns to the ground.

SEX & VIOLENCE  - For a bunch of young twenty somethings staying out at a far away location theres surprisingly little sex (they're all far too busy having deep and meaningful conversations about Heroin addiction), If this was a Friday the 13th movie they'd be at it like rabbits.

The violence is...extreme to say the least. Its not just random chainsawings, it's much more excruciating than that. Here are some noteable examples...

Possessed Mia slicing her own tongue in half with a razor blade after "erotically" licking it...

Mia puking blood into Olivia's face infecting her in the process...

Deadite Olivia indulging in a spot of self mutilation as she gleefully cuts off her own cheeks...

Eric smashing Deadite Olivia's brains in with the top half of a porcelain toilet...

Eric having to pull a hypodermic needle from a spot perilously close to his eyeball...

Natalie cutting her possessed arm off...

To make matters worse, this desperate tactic doesn't even work. Natalie still turns full Deadite. David kills her by blowing her other arm off and she bleeds to death (which seems a bit of a lame way for a Deadite to go if you ask me).

Then we get the final scenes - David heroically blows himself, Deadite Eric and the cabin to kingdom come by shooting a can of Gasoline. This selfless act causes the fifth death in the prophecy which unleashes the dreaded Abomination (not even Ash on his worst day would have been that dumb).

A quick word about the Abomination. All the way through the film its been built up as this big, bad ultimate evil. This major force of Lovecraftian horror...and what do we get when it finally manifests itself ? It takes on the form of Mia...thats it. I know there's a running theme in the Evil Dead films where the main hero has to fight an evil doppelganger of themselves but come on...this just seems like a lazy anti-climax to me...

Things do pick up though when the heavens open and it literally RAINS BLOOD...

This rain of red gore coupled with the burning cabin makes a dramatic backdrop for the final battle between good and evil to occur. The Abomination is VERY easily defeated for a major demon. Mia just chainsaws it to pieces and the film ends. It is a spectacular chainsaw killing though, especially the final head slice...

RATING  - Evil Dead 2013 is a film that I have very mixed feelings about.

There are lots of things that just dont work for me. I dont like the lack of a compelling hero, I dont particularly like any of the characters and I really HATE all of the Heroin addiction subplot which really bogs down the first half of the movie. 

I do like the atmosphere though, they got that spot-on. The direction and cinematography is also top notch.

The violence is unsettling and seems more intimate this time round, it leaves a much nastier taste in your mouth watching it and some scenes will make you cringe. Whether this is a good or a bad thing is entirely down to your own preference but for me I prefer the campier, more comic book style violence of the original trilogy.

The ending though is truly spectacular- the rain of blood, the fiercely burning cabin, the chainsaw massacre, it's a visual spectacle which burns itself into your memory forever more.

My main problem with this film is that it just takes itself way, WAY too seriously. I know they where looking to move away from the comedy fest that the series had become with Army of Darkness and I can understand and appreciate what they where aiming for but, to me, it just seems that they went too far in the opposite direction. To the point where the film seems like it's going all out to be deliberately edgy which just comes off as being pretentious.

Overall - I'm giving this 3 and half boring junkies out of 5. It's by no means a bad film but sadly it just didn't work for me. I wanted to like it more than I did but I just couldn't get past it's po-faced tone. The least of the Evil Dead series by a long shot.

Thankfully, the producers eventually relented and the Ash vs Evil Dead TV series arrived a few years later. Ash was back - older, definitely NOT wiser and that essential sense of fun returned to the Evil Dead universe for three wonderful seasons. I'm concentrating only on the films right now, so I won't be reviewing the TV show just yet, but rest assured I will be doing at some point as there's a LOT to talk about. Stay tuned...

POSTER/VHS/DVD ART  -