Film Review: ‘Evil Dead’ Gets the Blood But Misses the Pulse

Submitted by BrianTT on April 5, 2013 - 10:20am

CHICAGO – When the trailer for Fede Alvarez’s remake of the Sam Raimi classic “Evil Dead” hit the net, horror fans giggled with glee. A gore fest with no CGI made in the spirit of the flick that made Bruce Campbell a star? Sign me up. With the weakened state of the genre overall (last year was a rough one for horror fans), we were kind of banking on this one. And that hope for a creative spark has allowed audiences to overlook the notable flaws of Alvarez’s film. I get it. I want to love it too. But there are times where it’s so hard to do so.

Rating: 3.0/5.0

“Evil Dead” sets out to rattle you from the very beginning. A group of terrified people tie an equally-shattered girl to a wooden beam in the basement of an old cabin. She screams, she cries, she begs the man about to burn her alive, who turns out to be her father, not to light the match. Of course, she’s not the victim you first suspect. She’s been possessed by something truly evil. And that force of malevolent power is trapped in The Book of the Dead, which is then conveniently left on a table for the next idiot to find in the first of a few too many head-scratching moments in the plotting of this “Evil Dead.”

Read Brian Tallerico’s full review of “Evil Dead” in our reviews section.

Mia (Jane Levy) is trying to kick an addiction to drugs. She’s failed before. What better place to avoid the trappings of the real world than a cabin in the woods? Mia arrives at the barely-standing wood structure ahead of brother David (Shiloh Fernandez) & her bro’s girlfriend Natalie (Elizabeth Blackmore), and friends, Eric (Lou Taylor Pucci) & Olivia (Jessica Lucas). After some truly horrendous dialogue and plotting about estranged siblings and the perils of kicking drugs, the action kicks in.

And it kicks in hard. Eric reads from the Book of the Dead and unleashes the evil within. Mia is overtaken by an evil force that essentially becomes contagious, passing itself to other people in the cabin and forcing them to commit horrendous acts, often to themselves. The devil needs five souls to take over the world. What a lovely coincidence that there are five people in the cabin.

Continue reading for Brian Tallerico’s full “Evil Dead” review.

“Evil Dead” stars Jane Levy, Shiloh Fernandez, Lou Taylor Pucci, Jessica Lucas, and Elizabeth Blackmore. It was written and directed by Fede Alvarez. It opens on April 5, 2013 and is rated R.