I watched the 2013 remake (reboot? sequel? reimagining? I don’t even know what we’re calling these things anymore) of Evil Dead. I figured I should at least check out some of Fede Álvarez’s stuff before completely dismissing the new Alien movie sight unseen.
It was not as terrible as I had been expecting but it is not good.
The story and plot are contrived and I can’t say as I really cared about any of the characters, although I did feel kind of bad for main character Mia, who seems to have gotten dragged into this whole thing by her rather shitty friends.
Mia is brought to the cabin in the woods for an addiction intervention which is 1) the dumbest idea in the world and 2) the most obvious metaphor possible. I guess maybe this is a grasp at “Look, we’re telling a serious story here, okay?” but using demonic possession as a metaphor for drug addiction is so transparently cliched that you might as well not even bother. Besides—I don’t think that’s what anyone is coming to an Evil Dead movie for.
This movie is also extraordinarily bland to look at. While the camerawork is fine, the colors have been desaturated almost to the point where it might as well have been filmed in black and white, although not so far as to actually take advantage of being fully black and white. There are whole scenes in the second half of the movie that are lit so poorly it is nearly impossible to see anything, which is maybe fine since the whole thing has descended into gore by that point anyway.
It is hard to tell what this movie thinks it is actually doing. The original trilogy at least had fun with the premise; this one puts uninteresting characters in a situation that makes no sense and then pours fake blood over the whole thing, presumably in the hope that we won’t notice all of the holes.
The more I think about this movie, the more I am inclined to rescind my previous remarks and say the it is, in fact, terrible. It make me disinclined to go watch Álvarez’s next film, 2016’s Don’t Breathe.
I am also dubious about the 2023 sequel Evil Dead Rise. That one is a different writer/director and has gotten pretty good reviews but having watched this movie, I am still skeptical. I am just not sure there is all that much to the larger Evil Dead story and all of this feels like a really dumb franchise-building attempt.