This morning I got up sick as fuck with a horrible cold, shoved a bunch of assorted medicines into my face hole, got a baby sitter for my 1 year old, and dragged my fat ass to the theater to witness “The Lord of the Rings” of horror. I hope you glued your fuckin mental socks on cause the new Evil Dead is going to tear them off, saw them in half, shoot them with a nail gun, rip them apart, and then vomit on your face. This ghastly showcase of blood and gore is like a nostalgic walk down memory lane. In the beginning it makes you feel at home with little homages to the original 1981 film sprinkled through out the scene. In particular the old beat up and rusted 1973 Oldsmobile makes an appearance sitting quietly beside the cabin as if this is not the first nightmare that has occurred here. This, among other things I will not spoil for you, leads me to believe that this was definitely NOT a remake in the sense that you may be thinking. It feels like a fresh take on an old story and is presented in a way that not only pays tribute the original but also fleshes out the story with enough content to stand as a sequel.
With this new cast of characters we are introduced to a much more well rounded group with a back story as opposed to the original movies which had mostly forgettable characters aside from Ash and whatever girlfriend he happened to be dismembering. I felt more connected to the characters in this movie than I ever did in the originals and you could feel that connection carry over between the characters in a way that made you actually give a shit about them dying. This is not to say that there isn’t any flesh for the meat grinder because there are a couple characters given less screen time that you know are there just to be tortured meat puppets. Since I am talking about the cast I will note that Bruce Campbell is nowhere to be seen in this movie which is kind of a let down but it also allows for these young actors to get their feet dirty in ways that a 54 year old man just simply wouldn’t be able to hang with. I am not discounting Bruce though because I would love to see him in the next film but I highly doubt we will ever see him beat the living shit out of him self in a kitchen again, but to have him on board just to kill a few more deadites and flesh out the story even more would be spectacular. Anyways to get back on track here, gore… there is a LOT of it in this movie. I am not talking Saw and Hostel torture porn bullshit, I am talking about the fun kind of gore that has us horror fans frothing at the mouth. By the end of this movie you will have witnessed some of the goriest scenes ever put on film with all kinds of body parts being ripped, sliced, sawed, gouged, and splattered against the wall.
Although this is one the best horror films I have seen in theaters in years it does have a few issues I would like to address. The opening scene alludes to some things that happened in the past and presents some new characters that bring about questions that are never answered or even hinted to afterwards. For instance who are those fuckin “the hills have eyes” lookin creeps in the cellar at the beginning and why does this creepy old lady know so much about the book. My only other beef I have with this movie is with Mia the main character who for the larger part of the movie is just a recovering mentally unstable junkie looking for a way out. But before I bash the direction they took with her character I must commend her for this role because she was brutally tortured throughout this movie and some of those scenes including being buried alive actually happened to her in real life because the director Fede Alvarez wanted to make sure that all of the effects were practical and that they only used CGI when they absolutely had to. So she becomes this super fuckin evil antagonist who’s sole purpose is to torment the other characters throughout the film. She takes this role and runs with it and does a spectacular job scaring the shit out of you but there is a twist that you may or may not see coming near the end. It puts her character into an awesome position (which I will not spoil) but it happens so quick that it just feels rushed and is not given a deserving amount of screen time and you are left wishing there was more to it. I am sure the director wants to leave some wiggle room for character development in the second film but some times less is not more.
To sum it all up though this was a fuckin great Evil Dead movie and if you are a fan you should be at the theater right now instead of reading this shit. I would gladly welcome this entry into the Evil Dead series in fact I think we should call it Evil Dead 4 from now on. Look out for the unrated Blu-ray because the movie has some scenes cut out of it in order to get an R rating.
