'Evil Dead' a gruesome, gory letdown

Generally speaking I'm not the biggest fan of remakes, especially when the film is one that is near and dear to horror fans hearts such as Sam Raimi's cult classic The Evil Dead. I was skeptical, to say the least, when I first heard about this project, but started to become encouraged the more I learned about it. After all, Raimi himself would be involved in the production and the director, Uruguayan born filmmaker Fede Alvarez, was hand picked by him to recreate his iconic film. Alvarez was going to eschew the campiness of the original and go for a straight forward horror approach promising nothing but relentless terror and dread. Ok I thought, I'm on board, sign me up to be shocked, frightened and disturbed. Sadly though, after watching Evil Dead, I was neither shocked, nor frightened, and only mildly disturbed. My instant reaction to this new version was mostly... meh!

The state of horror films these days seems to be on a continuous decline. Perhaps I've become so desensitized to almost everything I see now because I've pretty much seen it all. It seems like today's generation of horror filmmakers think the audience will get off on seeing a bunch of attractive young people put through various stages of torture and self mutilation whilst providing copious amounts of blood and gore in order to shock and horrify them. The problem I have is that I'm never invested in these characters so when bad things happen to them it has little to no impact on me and it feels empty and hollow. I desperately wanted Evil Dead to toy with my expectations, much like last year's Cabin in the Woods did, or shock and repulse me like 2008's Martyrs did, or at the very least create some type of atmosphere and tension like Sinister or The House of the Devil. Unfortunately, Evil Dead came up short in these areas but it did provide some spectacular gore effects for those that care about that kind of thing.

I'm assuming that anyone who is thinking about seeing this is pretty much already familiar with the premise of the story. Five twenty-somethings head to a remote cabin in the woods, but the twist this time is that they are not there to camp, instead they are planning an intervention for their drug addicted friend Mia (Jane Levy) and they want her to detox there. Of course it doesn't take long for her to start resisting this and when she runs off into the woods she is attacked by an unseen force which, much like in the original, plants its demon seed in her via tree rape. Naturally when she tries to warn the others that there is something out there they just chalk it up to hallucinations from her drug addled mind. Meanwhile, after exploring a smelly and dank cellar filled with dead and mutilated cats (you'd think that this might be an indication that they should get the heck out of there already), they come upon an old book that appears to be bound in human skin. Obviously it turns out to be the Necronomicon (book of the dead) and when the group's hippy type character Eric (Lou Taylor Pucci) starts to inexplicably go through it page by page and read passages aloud the evil demon forces get unleashed and each one of them, including Eric's girlfriend Olivia (Jessica Lucas), Mia's brother David (Shiloh Fernandez), and David's girlfriend Natalie (Elizabeth Blackmore), start to become possessed one by one. Madness, mayhem, face cutting and limb severing ensue.

Look, it's nearly impossible for me not to compare this movie to the original and even though Alvarez's version is slickly produced with well staged gory set pieces it lacked the low-budget charm and wit of the Raimi classic, not to mention some of the unique and creative camera work that really gave it some atmosphere and made it stand out. There is no character in this film that even comes close to being as interesting as Bruce Campbell's Ash was in the original. The performances here are acceptable but each character is essentially interchangeable and no one really grabbed my attention.

I suppose to the greenhorn, uninitiated horror fan that has a limited frame of reference where this genre is concerned Evil Dead may blow them away with its levels of intense terror and bloody gore, but to this old dog who has virtually seen it all, I'm still waiting to be shown some new tricks.

I was fairly disappointed with Evil Dead and what I missed the most was that sense of fun that I had when watching the originals. I know the tone of this is meant to be serious but I would have appreciated at least a couple of moments of levity. There were none.

Overall, Evil Dead is just a slicked-up but ultimately hollow shell of its predecessor's self. I'm not looking forward to the inevitable sequels that are sure to follow.

I give Evil Dead a 5 out of 10.

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.