Film Diary 2013: Evil Dead

Raimi's The Evil Dead was probably the last of the trilogy I saw, though I was aware that the film didn't veer into as goofy and slapstick territory as its kin, I was still looking forward to seeing it.  Unfortunately, I found it to be a disappointing exploitational horror that seemed to be made primarily to 'out do' other recent horrors, and only occasionally showed flourishes of Raimi's visual sensibility that would be cranked up to 11 come Evil Dead 2 in 1987.

As a side note, Evil Dead 2 is essentially also a remake of The Evil Dead, however condensing the entirety of the first film into a lively first act.

Anyway, this distinction is important to note, as Fede Alvarez' Evil Dead feels like more in the spirit - and takes plenty of sequences from - that first original shocker rather than the over-the-top, arch sequels.

It adds an extra layer of drama to the traditional teenagers go to a creepy cabin set-up, by making the events part of an intervention.  Mia (Jane Levy) is going to attempt cold turkey from drug abuse, her somewhat estranged brother David (Shiloh Fernandez) has showed up to lend support.  Along with three other friends; nerdy Eric (Lou Taylor Pucci), nurse Olivia (Jessica Lucas) and David's girlfriend Natalie (Elizabeth Blackmore).

They discover some odd things in the cabin's basement, including a book bound in human flesh, which Eric winds up reading from - despite plenty of warnings not to - and he unleashes a malevolent force that begins to terrorise the group.

It is inevitable that this film will be compared to the original, it sort of makes a concerted choice to be both remake and sequel, in a manner of speaking, but Alvarez' style - at first - seems to be pushing things in a different direction, favouring a more gritty, earthern look akin to say Eden Lake or The Descent.

Unfortunately, as far as this comparison goes, he does fall back onto Raimi's old tricks which sit at odds with his overall vision.  Indeed, the genius of Raimi's first two Evil Deads was his use of the camera as the malevolent force, it almost made the viewer complicit with the evil in the woods, as if we were the ones willing and visiting this terror upon those hapless teens.
Here, Alvarez chucks in the odd Raimi-cam style shot, as if it's a box that must be ticked, and these flourishes seem forced rather than full of the destructive, ludicrous energy that buoyed even the first of Raimi's Evil Dead films.

Despite characters never really being a strong part of the original Evil Dead trilogy (outside of Bruce Campbell's charmingly pig-headed Ash) there was a gleeful sense of fun to be had with the horrors that befell them, or, moreso in the first film, an icky disgust.  Here, despite some really fantastic make-up and practical effects, Alvarez generally fails to put together a truly skin-crawling or nightmarish sequence that will linger long in the memory, going primarily for nastier, more torture-based squeamish moments.  It is also at odds with his gritty realism that the characters, especially poor geeky Eric, to withstand incredible amounts of punishment in a strangely stoic fashion, further distancing the viewer from the action.

There's a neatly orchestrated climactic confrontation, but it's too little too late by then, with most of the set-pieces oddly edited away from or suffering from having to straddle an awkward line between the original The Evil Dead's gruelling terror and the sequels crowd-pleasing, gore-soaked quips.  When it does make the inevitable concession to the latter it's not nearly as satisfying as even the lamest of Campbell's throwaway one-liners.

Suffering from an identity crisis, unsure of which Evil Dead fans it should be pleasing, when ultimately it'd be better off following its own path, this is a surprisingly insipid, and not-at-all terrifying horror movie.

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