Thursday, October 24, 2013

3 Short Paragraphs: Evil Dead

2013, Fede Alvarez -- download

The original The Evil Dead is one of those movies we spent during college years sharing with everyone. It is the best of the best of low budget, cheezie, gory horror movies. It set the tone, like Halloween and Friday the 13th before it, for many bad clones and copies. It also established a precedent of mixing horror and humour together, but perfected keeping with the tone intended -- in other words, not turning into farce. 

This movie cares not a wit for the humour of the first, beyond in a comic relief "that is so dumb" sort of way.  But as a general horror movie it is not so bad. It takes the premise of the cabin in the woods that collects and tries to kill a bunch of dumb kids, to the current era.  This one takes place during a weekend to help an estranged brother and sister deal with her addiction problems, with some friends tagging along for good measure. The cabin has the infamous book of the dead, now Naturom Demonto, in the cellar and the usual dimwit decides to read it. Monsters are summoned, evil spirits abound and people pseudo-die. And very real kill each other.

The movie replaces Ash with resourceful, tenacious Mia, the recovering addict. She not only survives the onslaught of the demonic possessed bodies of her friends and brother, but also is able to kill the boss-level monster that is summoned during the events. She is as maniacal as Ash ever was but it is a cliche of another type to see a small featured woman overcome Big Evil. As an update to the movie, I cannot really complain about its buckets of blood and over the top tone, considering the source, but other than a replacement for a great movie that 20sumthins of today are not likely to find appealing, I didn't really see the point of this movie. It is technically well done, but left me cold. I think I will stick with Cabin in the Woods as an update to the genre.

P.S. Great poster but for the overlayed text. The text is pure B.S.  And for an even better poster, see this fanart at Deviant.

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