Evil Dead - My Review

Evil Dead  -  2013  -  Directed by Fede Alvarez

This remake of the largely influential cult classic that Sam Raimi introduced to audiences in the 1980's, is being billed as the most terrifying movie you will ever experience. I would of settled for a couple scares instead what I got was every horror cliche in the book along with some of the dumbest characters ever found in a horror movie.

A group of friends - Mia, David, Eric, Olivia and Natalie - all get together in a log cabin in the woods that looks as if it became uninhabitable about 100 years ago so they can help Mia kick her drug habit. Mia, played by Jane Levy, is obviously the choice to be possessed as she is a druggie with tattoos and clearly has this coming. David (Shiloh Fernandez), is her not so loyal brother who of course will now stick by her no matter what even when common sense should prevail.

As Mia sinks further into her withdrawal, the guys find a hidden trapdoor beneath the cabin and discover a torture chamber with dozens of dead cats and a book that is bound by barbed wire and appears to be made with human skin and begs not to be opened. Of course, Eric opens it and recites passages that leads to the evil dead being awakened.

What follows is another example of torture porn and the most gruesome deaths that the filmmakers are able to come up with.

There are countless scenes of these people doing the dumbest things possible that there is no way to mention them all. When Mia plunges her car into a lake the first thing she does is attempt to restart the car. After all hell (literally) has broke loose in the cabin, David sends his girlfriend, Natalie, into the cabin by her herself to get water and sugar. I guess it was his way of breaking up with her.

When I was growing up the most terrifying movie I saw was John Carpenter's classic Halloween. Part of what made it so terrifying to me was I wanted Jamie Lee Curtis to survive and kill the madman stalking her. In the recent crop of horror movies we are subjected to mindless idiotic characters who not only do we not care if they live we actually root for them to die. Where is the horror in that? Evil Dead is likely to be one of the worst movies I see this year.

Rating: 2 out of 10