As I get older, I enjoy the stereotypical "gory horror movie" less and less. There was a certain charm to the horror films of the 70s, 80s, and some of the 90s. They were less about being gruesome and more about just be startling. The 70s and 80s films can be enjoyed simply on making fun of the fake plastic disembodied heads or the varying shades of red (pink? BROWN?) that they would use to make the blood. I find very little interest in so-called "torture porn". I don't like to see good people suffer. I can't understand why people would be alright with that. My favorite horror films are the ones that combine comedy and horror. I'm a fan of the "Final Destination" series. I'm also a fan of the original "Evil Dead" series. Sam Raimi's original films mixed comedy into horror and eventually turned into comedy with touches of horror. They had the audience laughing between being disgusted. This is where the 2013 remake of "Evil Dead" fails. It is just gruesome and mean with no hint of amusement or enjoyment. It is a well-made special effects reel with the beginnings of a good story that just stumbles around giving glimpses of the original series and then spitting on them with black bile.
You know the drill. Five young-adults meet up in a secluded cabin in the woods (not to be confused with THE "Cabin in the Woods", the infinitely better film from last year). They are all here to help Mia (Jane Levy) overcome a drug habit, a story-line that would have been perused and put in another film or used much better here (combining the "demons" of drug-use with real "demons", maybe?). The group is drawn to a horrible smell in the basement which turns out to be the mummified corpses of animals. You'd think this would be enough to get them to get back in the car, right? Nope. Eric (the insufferable Lou Taylor Pucci), the nerdy one (who you can tell is nerdy from the beard, of course) comes across a book that appears to be bound in human skin and has lots of creepy drawings and writings begging whoever reads it to not read it out loud or write the phrases. So naturally Eric does this. This unleashes some sort of power and it terrorizes the group.
The original "Evil Dead" was very violent and gory. The possessed characters lost limbs resulting in large amounts of bright red blood-like substances shooting and also quite a lot of white milk (for some reason). The gore was almost played for a comedic effect, something that the later "Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn" and "Army of Darkness" would fully utilize. The remake of "Evil Dead" doesn't want to make you laugh or smile. It wants to just make you look away. There is nothing surprising, funny, shocking, or interesting about seeing a person who is possessed urinate on themselves. It is simply an exercise in doing something simply because you can do it. I'm far from a hater of gory violence in horror films. It most certainly serves a purpose. The purpose they use it for in "Evil Dead" is simply to make you look away. If that is what you are looking for, by all means go right ahead.
A true scary horror film has to make you root for the characters. While Levy's character is believable (and deserves a much better movie), I could not possibly see Pucci's character killed fast enough. If you don't care about the characters, it just becomes blood splattered on a wall. This film can never decide if the characters are simply vessels filled with red goop or if we should care about them.
If there is anything to like about "Evil Dead" is that it almost never (if ever) relies on CGI effects. It leads me to hope that director Fede Alvarez can put together an original horror story using these techniques and make them look as good as they do here. Until then, I will be eagerly awaiting the next Ti West film or, to a lesser extent, the next Alexandre Aja film.
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