Evil Dead (2013) – Movie Review
By Anne Brodie Apr 5, 2013, 12:06 GMT
Remake of the 1981 cult hit of the same name. ...moreFive teenagers head to a remote cabin in the woods and are beset by evil, violent forces. They battle them bravely until the demonic predator overwhelms them and one by one, they ... Sound familiar? It ought to.
This is one of the oldest and most successful lucrative horror plots / clichés in movie history. Variations on the formula have existed at least sixty years, gaining the most traction with the Friday the 13th films, 80’s copycats and most recently Cabin in the Woods.
A short was released last year called How to Survive a Horror Film: Cabin in the Woods. So it’s a meme, a chart, a box, a thing, with built in limitations and possibilities. The more resourceful the humans, the gorier the revenge, the most claustrophobic and inescapable, the more the fans dig it.
Fans have spot spots in their hearts for Evil Dead (1987) and subsequent retreads, so expectations were high when a 2013 version was announced, directed by not Sam Raimi of the original, but his handpicked newcomer, Uruguayan filmmaker Fede Alvarez. Alvarez posted Panic Attack! On YouTube in 2009, it caught Raimi’s eye and boom! He’s the new Evil Dead guy.
Alvarez raises the Evil Dead trope to new artistic levels. He has the eye of a classical painter, an Old Master. Jammed with tension and beauty, his framing and lighting and general production values are stunning. Sequence after sequence is just so beautiful. The most horrific things are happening to our humans and it looks like a Brueghel or a Gainsborough or a Caravaggio come to life.
Plot wise, a girl’s taken to the cabin by her brother and friends to rehabilitate from a drug addiction. Weird things happen from the get go. One of the party reads through a book in the cellar – along with dozens of hanging cats – and discovers it’s a witchcraft guide. He inadvertently raises the devil from hell, or sets the stage for it; each human is attacked and assumed by these unknown forces.
The addicted girl is the central vessel and carries out the devils work in no uncertain terms. As is usually the case, the humans are eventually reduced to meat, teeth and bone ready for slicing and hacking.
It’s incredible how filmmakers constantly come up with new and progressively weirder ways to torture and kill. There’s some rough stuff here, but generally speaking, nothing we haven’t seen before in some way shape or form. In the end it’s all grist for the horror mill.
I don’t know if I speak for anyone else, but numbness sets in and the torments soon add up to nothing as you wait for the end credits. You know how it’s going to come out, but it’s a good looking journey.
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35mm horror
Written by Fede Alvarez, Diablo Cody, Sam Raimi, Rodo Sayagues Mendez
Directed by Fede Alvarez
Opens April 5
Runtime 91 minutes
MPAA: 16+
Country: USA
Language: English
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