The Evil Dead Franchise (Sam Raimi/Fede Alvarez/Lee Cronin, 1981-2023)

[TheDudeAbides]

Indiewire posted their review of the Evil Dead remake from the SXSW screening. Not that their word necessarily will be any indication of your enjoyment, but they did not like it.

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/ ... c-20130309

[Finch]

Already posted that same review on Saturday.

[Matt]

To be fair, he posted that in the SXSW thread and I moved it here.

[MichaelB]

Kim Newman isn't remotely blind to its faults, but is guardedly positive.

[JamesF]

I went to the same press screening as Kim Newman last night, and he's pretty much spot-on. The film is a perfectly competent rollercoaster ride, good grisly disposable fun.

Beware though, his review does give a massive spoiler about a post-credits surprise!

[jindianajonz]

Beware though, his review does give a massive spoiler about a post-credits surprise!

The version I saw didn't have anything after the credits (or maybe we didn't stick around for it). Could you please elaborate? (With spoiler tags, of course!)

[JamesF]

I'll send you a PM, since I don't want to give any members the chance the opportunity to click it before they have the chance to see the film. Trust me, it's best left as a surprise.

[Finch]

Another pan, courtesy of Twitch

What makes the remake half-a-movie at best, is that it is merely an engine for gore. Painful, quite realistic gore. A wet-dream for those who look for this type of thing, that somehow survived NC-17 censorship. Tree rape and limb-severings aplenty are done so with effects that slickly combine old-school practical and modern digital craft. So much time is spent getting rusty nails propelled into arms and faces that the filmmakers forgot to make it riveting (sorry) in any other way. If onscreen suffering floats your boat, and you've not tired of the Torture Porn cycle that I thought was well behind us at this point, then this is the horror film for you. Ultimately, Evil Dead is not scary, or even interesting.

[Finch]

And a good one from Slant!

[Finch]

Didn't care for the new Evil Dead. The dialogue's on the nose and the interesting idea of Mia being a drug addict gets dropped as soon as the mayhem starts. Also, the new film misses a character like Ash you can invest in, and the joy of filmmaking that you sensed in Raimi's original first film is totally missing from this one. The famous tracking shots through the woods are repeated here but somehow feel less energetic, and the entire film is just oppressively grim. Alright, Raimi's first film played it fairly straight as well but it had a the light touch. (I did, however, laugh at this exchange "I will feast on your soul" - "Feast on this, motherfucker!") And a serious warning: this is genuinely NOT for the squeamish. The extreme brutality on display gives the cruelties in Takashi Miike's films a run for its money. PS.: I thought the Necronomicon looked lovely if you know what I mean.

[mfunk9786]

Eh. Interesting premise bogged down by poor direction, a bad score (and use of said score) and near-constant shifts in tone. The lead, Jane Levy, is obviously talented and has some neat moments here (especially one behind plastic), but like the rest of Evil Dead's cavalcade of unknowns, she's an undercooked caricature that the film doesn't stop long enough to introduce us to in any real way. The rest of the cast is dull as dirt, and the film doesn't know whether it wants to terrify, torture, or delight its audience with slapsticky violence. It does all three interchangeably, and the shifts in tone eventually become just too much - you'll find yourself losing interest before the gory finale (that's pretty well shot, maybe the only really well shot footage here). In a post-Cabin In the Woods and Cabin Fever landscape, a film this tone deaf can't get by with so many half measures.

[colinr0380]

I agree with both Finch and mfunk on this one, especially on mfunk's point about the score, which seemed to veer wildly from being tonally subdued and a little too average and noodling for the action it was running under (not particularly amusing or ironically used, just...there) to amusingly operatically bombastic during the "Evil Dead" title card at the beginning and the end! (Which I liked a lot but happened too rarely!)

mfunk is right about the tonal shifts too. I don't see the film as po-faced at all, but the approach to violence is often so grim that understandably the humour is a lot more hidden this time around (at least until the more entertaining and amusing gory climax!). It seems that the film took the idea of small but graphically intense moments of violence that make the audience cringe as the cue for the first two thirds of the film. Every character in the remake has to have their equivalent to the broken pencil being stabbed into the ankle from the original film.

On Finch's point about the Mia drug addict subplot being dropped as soon as the mayhem starts, I would entirely agree, and I'm not really sure if trying to 'characterise the characters' really helps or hinders the film. On the one hand it gives the actors something to get their teeth into in terms of motivation for being at the cabin and setting up the relationships, and it lays down the exposition for the inspired 'death and resurrection' scene leading into the final battle

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(although does someone having od'd and being resuscitated once before really mean that they will be physically better equipped to go through the same experience again?)

On the other it feels as if it adds problematic subliminal 'motivations' for why we are seeing this group of people getting systematically destroyed. Though I think this has less to do with Mia going cold turkey than with the other members of the group. Though the film does seem pointlessly do a semi, halfhearted attempt at a 'this is all in the mind of someone going through the worst cold turkey experience ever' section, despite not being the kind of film where anyone could come to that conclusion after the first few moments of literally in your face blood vomiting! (Or if they do try and draw the non-demonically possessed conclusion, as vaguely happens a little later on in the film, they get the appropriate response of being laughed at for being so deluded!). Is the suggestion that Mia is somehow chosen because she is weak and flawed and redeems herself by literally battling her demon in the climax? (If so, that would make the Silent Hill-esque air raid siren going off in the final battle make some sense).

I'm a little more concerned by the secondary characters given small bits of characterisation that vaguely suggest reasons for their punishment. Is Olivia being unsympathetically brusque towards a drug addict trying to escape the cabin (being cruel to be kind) and being rather bossy enough 'motivation' to have her cut her face off? Is Eric unleashing the horror by stupidly (idiotically. Head-on-the-wall-bangingly) opening and reading the Necronomicon really deserving of taking most of the, if not most brutal, the most sustained and dragged out, punishment in the film, as if to make him atone for his (stupid, stupid) mistake? If this was intended, it feels reductive. Though maybe it was just there to flesh out the characters with no deeper meaning to be read into it than that?

In some ways though it feels less problematic when it is just four shiny, happy, untroubled, all-American kids going on holiday without any particular motivating backstory or character quirks to suggest culpability in their tortures, as in the original (and it was bordering on the parodical even there). Who are all responsible for exploring the cellar and opening the book, so one does not take all the responsibility (something that Cabin In The Woods beautifully tackled). In some ways it takes a lot more daring to choose to be so simplistic in characterisation (going archetypal, even sketchy with them) than to get into the mire of giving characters backstories and flaws that run the risk of allowing the audience to write the characters off as unlikeable or unsympathetic and therefore 'deserving' in some ways.

And I think the key to this is the portrayal of the girlfriend Natalie in this film, who gets the least characterisation of all of the group and in some ways sticks the longest in the mind for that. Her tragedy also resonates more in the sense that she is the only member of the group who doesn't seem to need to be there for Mia, just for her boyfriend David, Mia's brother. So she doesn't have the same kind of backstory issues that the other four have to work through between themselves. She and David are playing the roles that Ash and his girlfriend had in the original, and I wonder if Natalie was purposefully given less characterisation to fade her into the background due to the way that the undying love between Ash and his girlfriend has been transferred over into the affection between brother and sister in the remake (the necklace of the original film being turned into the Wiccan necklace that David gives to Mia).

I find the film both degenerates into referencing the original (reminding me slightly of that Friday the 13th remake that more ambitiously compressed the elements of the first three films of that series into one, whether it fit tonally or not) and becomes purer and more entertaining, obviously blackly comic and exciting in that final section of the film. There have been hints earlier on of the Evil Dead origin story (Natalie's possessed arm echoing Ash's in Evil Dead II, though of course without the slapstick Three Stooges element!) but the degeneration into revealing iconic Evil Dead elements come thick and fast in Mia's final fight as she finally gets her hands (or hand) on the iconic chainsaw. In that sense while the

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Ash cameo after the end credits

is still slightly head scratching, it makes sense in the light of that final sequence which shows the film has finally found its extremely black sense of humour again underneath all of the gruelling torture-gore (and kind of gives us the epic battle in pouring blood red rain that Cabin In The Woods purposefully withheld). Not Braindead-esque proportions of goofy gore humour (everything feels as if it hurts too much in this film!) but humour nonetheless, and I could certainly see Mia teaming up to chainsaw-battle the undead in future, less brutal instalments!

[tenia]

I'm a little more concerned by the secondary characters given small bits of characterisation that vaguely suggest reasons for their punishment. Is Olivia being unsympathetically brusque towards a drug addict trying to escape the cabin (being cruel to be kind) and being rather bossy enough 'motivation' to have her cut her face off? Is Eric unleashing the horror by stupidly (idiotically. Head-on-the-wall-bangingly) opening and reading the Necronomicon really deserving of taking most of the, if not most brutal, the most sustained and dragged out, punishment in the film, as if to make him atone for his (stupid, stupid) mistake? If this was intended, it feels reductive. Though maybe it was just there to flesh out the characters with no deeper meaning to be read into it than that?

I'm wondering if that's not over-reading the movie. I certainly didn't feel they were punished for their past actions, but that it was merely the consequences of the genre movie Evil Dead 2013 is : a straight-forward brutally graphic movie, with not a lot of justification as to why it should be so brutal.
They just have to die, because the movie wants them to. Not sure it needs any kind of character-driven justification.

[colinr0380]

I do agree that my comments above aren't really on issues that ruin the film, though I would slightly disagree that it is reading too much into the characters. While listening to the commentary last night the director did talk a little about the characters in the early section all having 'agendas' and of Mia ironically being the most innocent one of the group.

While I think that I prefer the 'blanker' characters on show in the original films, I do think giving characters more individual group dynamics does emphasise well the point where the film shifts from character interaction into brutal horror. That can often be a problematic gear change in horror films as it runs the risk of disappointing an audience who have been engaged up to that point - the point where a potentially much subtler film with the same characters is abandoned for a plunge into no holds barred violence (it is a similar paradigm to one used in action movies too!). But it can also be quite a powerful device when handled well as a kind of brutally disruptive break in the flow of the narrative by more powerful forces from which point there is no going back. For example in the Olivia scene: you think that you are still able to control the situation and use your nursing abilities to help? Nope, cut your face off.

Re-watching the film, I think I'm a little less harsh on it, and definitely wouldn't class it as a travesty of the original or anything like that. I still much prefer Evil Dead II as the most exciting, funniest and most tonally consistent of the series, but I would certainly put this remake on a part with the first Evil Dead film, losing certain elements from the original and adding its own quirks (mostly the sharp edge, extreme modern horror tone that Mr Sausage mentioned) to turn it into its own take on the same theme. It is still hurt quite a bit by coming along so soon after Cabin In The Woods exploded the subgenre though.

[domino harvey]

Finally saw this and yep, it's goddawful. Easily one of the worst horror movies I've ever seen, and we have an entire thread showing just what kind of competition this flick faced! Much of the blame goes to the utterly inept, YouTube video-level direction here, which is often nonsensical and has no idea how to use anything the cinema provides to play out its narrative. The gore is so color-timed into nothing that the "all practical effects" gimmick is meaningless. It's telling that the only time the film even gets interesting is in the last ten minutes when we finally see some blood red and not deep maroon! As Colin mentioned, the finale's the only time this thing even comes alive, and it features one truly disgusting but interesting moment of creativity in an otherwise desolate wasteland of ideas, entertainment, and suspense. And the two second post-credit nonsense has to be the most pathetic use of such a gimmick ever, and proof of this film's complete contempt for its audience ("They'll take whatever scraps we give them!")

[DarkImbecile]

Lee Cronin’s Evil Dead Rise

[colinr0380]

Evil Dead Rise seems interesting, although it feels a bit like the 2013 Evil Dead mashed together with the current trend for demonic older people hurting their children (Relic/The Midnight Man, etc) and a bit of the claustrophobic Critters 3!

Skinamarink seems really fascinating though (someone is going to have to do a piece on the resurgence of Canadian horror over the last decade soon), and I like that idea of it being almost entirely about the atmosphere and rooms. I wonder if it is a response to some of the more recent internet horror trends such as The Sun Vanished. Or that Anatomy video game.

[Finch]

Evil Dead Rise: I was actually a bit disappointed after reading fairly glowing reviews in the likes of Little White Lies etc. The movie gets off the wrong foot immediately with a terrible prologue the connection of which to the main story only becomes evident in the film's last scene and felt like an unnecessary bit of world building to me.

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Also, if the possessed girl from the prologue is living in the same apartment, how come she wasn't alerted to the unholy ruckus going on in the rest of the building all night, and I didn't get the impression that she was living on the other side of the complex. But I guess only in the movies do you sleep through an earthquake, screaming and shootings. (She did have headphones on as she walked out of the elevator. Sound-proof headphones maybe)

I recall reading Cronin saying he was keen to get the setup done in a swift manner; well, the prologue already wastes five minutes and since the rest of the film minus epilogue feels so self-contained, those two scenes could and should have been scrapped at script stage. The main story itself, the idea that it's kids in peril and from their mum no less is good but I also think the movie doesn't show enough interactions between Mum and her children to make the possession and the threat thereafter more resonant to the audience, at least to me. I cared a bit more about them than I did about, say, the young couples in the Alvarez remake, but again, it only feels more dangerous this time round because of parents being pitted against their children. Sutherland is great though as the mother and I also liked Sullivan (?) as the long absent sister (though on balance, I liked Jane Levy from 2013 better).

When the carnage begins, it doesn't spare the kids and it's well done (though the practical effects in Evil Dead 2013 looked more realistic still and cringe-inducing) but I felt like the more the same scenario repeats (someone finds the Necronomicon, the demons possess either them or someone close to them, the main character undergoes a rite of passage), the staler it gets. I liked 2013 for its sheer viciousness and the memorable finale in the blood rain. Rise has a cool final monster but little in this film has the same gut punch as Raimi's first film. The changes largely feel cosmetic and if there is more films after Rise, I think they need to change it up again as Sam did with Army of Darkness. I think Cronin is a promising director but he feels boxed in by this. And there needs to be a moratorium on quoting the blood tidal wave from Kubrick.

[DarkImbecile]

It's odd that the non-Raimi attempts to continue this franchise lean so hard into the gore and shock elements while completely dropping the campy humor, an element it turns out is especially important when modern effects work also negates the handcrafted charm of the melting faces and severed limbs of the original trilogy. Even the original Evil Dead, by a good margin the least slapsticky of Raimi's Ash films, leavened the hopelessness of the situation and the gruesomeness of the characters' fates with extremely exaggerated formal choices.

Evil Dead Rise retains the structure (group finds book, most die, one becomes the hardened survivor) and macguffin of the core films, but little of their tone or style, leaving it feeling like it has more in common with generic possession horror than its namesake. The familial angle on the afflicted group — our hero is a woman visiting her sister and three nieces and nephews of various ages in their condemned apartment building — seems promising at first, but the potential emotional weight of children watching their mother and siblings possessed by demons (or of adult sisters working out their issues with chainsaws and tattoo needles) never quite pays off.

The only real reason I'm not being even harder on this are the two lead performances: Lily Sullivan as our blood-drenched heroine and Alyssa Sutherland as the possessed matriarch, each bringing more verve and charisma to their characters than the script really deserves.

Evil Dead Rise: I was actually a bit disappointed after reading fairly glowing reviews in the likes of Little White Lies etc. The movie gets off the wrong foot immediately with a terrible prologue the connection of which to the main story only becomes evident in the film's last scene and felt like an unnecessary bit of world building to me.

This bookending sequence didn't bother me nearly as much as it did you, but nastiness of the opening sequence does square with my main complaint above — all of that becomes so much more palatable if there's some playfulness built in to the execution, rather than just relatively straightforward stone-faced horror technique.

[The Curious Sofa]

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